


The Mine

by Neery



Category: Transformers - All Media Types, Transformers: Prime
Genre: Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Kid Fic, Other, Post-War, Rebuilding, Revolution, Transformer Sparklings
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-25
Updated: 2020-05-01
Packaged: 2021-02-28 06:54:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 3
Words: 31,938
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22899859
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Neery/pseuds/Neery
Summary: The war is over. The Autobots won. Optimus thought they'd finally have a chance to rebuild their world the right way, but the Council threatens to sabotage the fragile peace at every step. Megatron's been sentenced to a life of labor in the mines, and no one seems interested in rehabilitating the captured Decepticons.When Megatron asks him for help, Optimus finds himself facing an impossible choice. Confronted with the Decepticons' ugly post-war reality, he can't keep standing by. Especially once he learns about the sparkling Megatron's carrying.Peace was meant to fix everything, but it may be that the revolution has only just started…
Relationships: Megatron/Optimus Prime
Comments: 95
Kudos: 229





	1. The Mine

**Author's Note:**

> With thanks to astolat, who encouraged me when I first came up with this idea, and my lovely betas spatz and fireweed.
> 
> Heed the tags! Detailed explanation of the warnings in the end notes. 
> 
> This story branches off from the aligned continuity sometime during the events of Transformers: Exodus, although you don't need to have read that to follow this story. I've been substituting bits and pieces of other canons where I preferred them. Specifically, I'm using a slightly altered version of Megatron's IDW backstory instead of his TFP one, and I'm also using bits of IDW canon about Disposables and the prejudices against cold-constructed mechs.

Megatron tried his hardest to ignore the shameful weakness of his frame. He hadn't been himself since the Autobot prison. His plating was thinning around the edges, which wasn't unexpected on the diluted fuel they gave him. But worse than that, he felt gripped by a fatigue that turned every swing of the pickaxe into an act of willpower. 

There was nothing _wrong_ with the fuel. It wasn't flight-grade, but it was serviceable nonetheless. He'd certainly had worse. And yet the taste of it set his tanks roiling, and a foul residue seemed to stick to his sensors no matter how many times he ran a chemical analysis and found no unexpected additives. 

Sometimes he had to fight the urge to rail at the guards about it when they came to bring his ration. They'd watch him drink it down suspiciously, making sure he wasn't stockpiling, as if there was enough of it to stockpile in the first place. The words bubbled up inside him, every bit of rage he felt, penned up in their mine like a mechanimal. He'd swallow the rage along with the fuel, burning on the way down along with whatever undetectable poison they'd put into his energon. There was no easier way to make yourself look ridiculous than to rant and rave from a position of weakness. And he was perfectly well aware of how weak his current position was. 

And yet he struggled to keep himself muted. How he hated them for putting him down here, after everything he'd done to escape the mines. He hated them for the vile fuel. He hated them for winning. Most of all, he hated them for seeing him weakened like this. 

It seemed to be getting worse. With his repair nanites running in fuel conservation mode, even a simple scratch now took days to disappear. There'd been a constant twinging below his tank for several decacycles, and his HUD kept bringing up a host of medical error codes he didn't have the software to interpret. Eventually he'd been forced to turn off half his internal sensors just to be able to focus on his work. 

This far down the mine, the tunnels were low and narrow. Joints clotted with dust creaked noisily as Megatron strained to drag the heavy cart behind him, bent low to keep from scraping his helm against the rough-hewn ceiling. There was very little light, but this was what Megatron's sensors had been built for, once upon a time. He could sense every fissure in the rock, every bit of rubble loose on the ground, every precarious shift in the settling layers of sediment. The never-ending awareness of the gigatons of stone above his head ground him down just as much as the constant weariness. 

He still made his quota. He'd been a miner for almost as long as he'd been a warrior, and the technique had come back as soon as he'd put his hand on the haft of the pickaxe. He didn't let the feeling of exhaustion slow him down. It wasn't worth giving the Autobots an excuse. This solitary confinement was hardly the worst they could do to him. There'd been a time he'd thought he'd rather be dead then returned to the mines, but now he found that despite it all, he was glad enough to be alive.

Under the circumstances, the gush of fluid from the seams of his abdominal armor came as a bit of a surprise. 

For a moment, he thought it was a spontaneous hemorrhage of energon. So the fuel really had been poisoned; just as he'd suspected all along. He tried to control the unwelcome rush of terror. He'd almost managed to convince himself that he'd resigned himself to his fate, but even now, he wanted to live. 

And then he saw the unmistakable blue fluorescence, and sat down hard on a rock before his stabilizers gave out. 

It seemed he'd been a fool.

He reactivated his internal diagnostics and canceled out the whole backlog of medical-gibberish error codes just in time to watch the emergence protocols activate. 

The emergence transformation wasn't supposed to be painful, but Megatron had had two full-frame reformats and a host of smaller modifications. Exactly none of it had been done with any thought for keeping his fabrication systems easily accessible, so the whole process was reasonably unpleasant after all. Thankfully it was also fully autonomous, so it continued apace even by the time he was braced on his knees, vents rattling and processor stalled out with pain. 

And then the pain stopped all at once. The armored plates over his abdomen split open, and he got his hand up just in time to catch the sparkling. 

It was tiny, small enough to lie in his cupped palms with space to spare. Too small even for a full-term Autobot sparkling, never mind a warmech. That wasn't surprising, of course. Megatron should've been on a double ration of flight-grade fuel and several supplements from the moment he was sparked. But for all that, the sparkling was perfectly formed, a wonderfully efficient little flightframe: narrow wings and auxiliary rotors for vertical take-off. A precision flier. The tops of his wings were the dark gunmetal gray of Megatron's own frame, but the bottom was a light, cloudy color that would blend him perfectly into Cybertron's overcast skies. 

He was beautiful. Megatron should've resented him: an unexpected souvenir of an occasion he didn't care to remember, a parasite who'd stolen all his energy for orns. Instead he found himself smiling helplessly at the fragile little wings, and the perfect articulation of those tiny hands made his spark ache with awe. The sparkling's blue optics were a shock at first, and then only a relief. They might give him a fighting chance in the glorious empire the Autobots were building for themselves. 

The sparkling squirmed in his hold, chirping. Megatron tucked him gently into the crook of his arm. The sparkling beeped at him curiously. Megatron smoothed the blunt side of his claws over the tiny wings. They shivered under his touch, giving him another glimpse at the cloud-bright underside. 

"Cloudwing," Megatron said, testing the sound of it in his mouth. The sparkling chirped at him again. "You like that? Cloudwing it is, then."

Cloudwing's plating hadn't even finished hardening. Gaps between the plates showed glimpses of soft protoform. The dust of the mine was already starting to settle into the seams of his armor. The sight made the old familiar rage swell up inside of him again. Megatron carefully wiped a smudge of dirt from the sparkling's armor, but his own hands were hardly clean; if anything, he was making it worse. 

Megatron tried to run a diagnostic routine on himself. There was still some fluid leaking through his seams, and he had no idea how much damage that forced transformation had done. But all his sensors wanted to focus on was the sparkling. His questing pings gave him more and more detailed information: the steady click and whoosh of the sparkling's fuel pump, the surprising strength in the small hands grasping curiously at Megatron's plating, the sparkling's fans laboring harder as dust settled into his filters. 

Megatron kept his EM field calm with an effort, trying to keep down the rising wave of poisonous rage. He himself had been cold-constructed, sparked in the mines with a pickaxe in his hand and sent to work before he'd even finished settling into his frame. He'd started a war rather than spend the rest of his life underground. 

He wouldn't let his own sparkling grow up in the dark of a mine.

But that left him with precious few choices. On his HUD a countdown had started, unprompted. Eight joors until the guards would arrive to bring his fuel ration and take away the energon crystals he'd mined. They'd try and take Cloudwing away from him if they found him here, just as they'd taken anything else. Rage welled up again, choking his intakes. Cloudwing squirmed anxiously, flailing, not yet coordinated enough to move around on his own but picking up on Megatron's desperate desire to _get away_ —

Megatron ran a ventilation cycle, trying to calm himself. He could try to fight the guards when they came, but it wasn't likely to go well for him. Any blaster discharge down here might set off an explosion, and the tunnels were precarious as it was. He'd be as likely to get caught in a collapse as the guards were. There was no way to keep Cloudwing safe. 

He could try and negotiate. What did the guards care about the fate of his offspring? They might allow Megatron to keep him rather than risk a fight. But this wasn't a place for a bitlet. Megatron regretted many things about the way the war had gone, but he'd never regretted that first rebellion, the fight that had freed them from the mines. He'd gained many vorns in the sun for himself and his followers. He wanted the same for Cloudwing. 

Which left only one choice. There hadn't been many mechs he would've trusted with his sparkling even before the war had been lost. Now, with what was left of his army locked up in Autobot prisons, there were even fewer. 

Cloudwing was running his fingers curiously over the plating on Megatron's arm, where the reflection of Megatron's optics left a red glow on the scuffed metal. He was cooing quietly to himself. The pings from his underpowered sonar prickled gently against Megatron's armor as the sparkling tested all his senses on him. 

"I'll make sure you're safe," Megatron whispered. Cloudwing looked up, all his sensors focusing on Megatron's face at the sound of his voice. Megatron stroked one of the tiny waving antenna, impossibly small next to his big clawed hands, and felt his spark wrench painfully inside his chest. 

He'd do whatever it took. He'd swallow his pride and beg, if he had to. 

Megatron settled back on his berth, leaning heavily against the wall, and tried to ignore the counter in the corner of his HUD, mercilessly ticking down. Eight joors until the guards came. Eight more joors that he'd get to hold his sparkling.

* * *

Optimus hadn't been in the mine for a breem, and already its dust was starting to clog his vents. He irritably dismissed the warnings from his HUD and ran yet another cleaning cycle on his filters. 

"I just don't understand why Megatron would ask for me, specifically," he muttered, half to himself. He'd have expected to be the last mech Megatron would want to see.

"He barricaded the door to his cell. Said he wouldn't open it for anyone but you," the overseer said, shifting nervously. 

"And you couldn't simply break the door down? You have a full squadron of guards at your disposal," Optimus snapped. The comm call had caught him at the end of a long and annoying day, and the last thing he wanted was to go crawling down a filthy mine because Megatron had started playing head-games with his jailers. 

The overseer twitched his pistons. "We weren't sure what would, um…." His vocoder gave a nervous click. "In its crystalloid form, tris-proton energon tends to explode if it splits the wrong way. That's why it's still mined by hand, even now."

Optimus stopped abruptly enough that the guard behind him almost crashed into his back. "You set Megatron to mining _explosive_ energon." 

The overseer squirmed. "Well, you see, he had the experience. Which is rare nowadays. And we don't need a _lot_ of tris-proton anymore, but there's some applications where you can't replace it…. He was working under close supervision! We certainly didn't give him the opportunity to create a stockpile!"

"And you're so sure of that you didn't dare force his door," Optimus said with a sigh. Wonderful. 

He'd objected to the idea of sentencing Megatron to work in the mines. Hard labor was barely used as a punishment on Cybertron anymore, and certainly wasn't conducive to rehabilitation. But he'd recused himself from the trial; it had seemed like the right choice at the time, when he _knew_ he couldn't be objective, after everything Megatron had done. By the time the verdict had been handed down, it'd been too late to influence the sentence. 

But he'd objected because he'd thought it was _cruel_. It hadn't occurred to him that anyone would be stupid enough to let Megatron work with _volatile chemicals_. 

"It takes a lot of tris-proton to create an explosion of any notable size. I'm _sure_ he wouldn't have had the opportunity—" the overseer muttered, trailing after him, but Optimus noted that he stayed well back once they actually rolled up to Megatron's door. 

Optimus sighed, causing a cloud of dust to blow out of his vents. Primus. He'd be spending the rest of the evening changing every filter he had. 

He snapped his battlemask shut, hammered on the door, and then took a hasty step back. Just in case. "Megatron! It's me. Optimus."

For a long moment, nothing happened. There were a lot of strange noises around the mine, stone creaking as it settled. Optimus tried to convince his threat assessment system that none of them were the ticking of a timer. Megatron wouldn't blow up a room with himself in it, not even to take Optimus out. That wasn't his style of revenge. 

The door swung open. Optimus froze, staring. For a moment, his whole processor stalled out. Then he took a hasty step inside, blocking the doorway with his body until he could pull the door closed behind himself. 

The room was tiny, roughly hewn out of the walls of the mine, small even by the standards of a prison cell. It was bare but for a narrow berth against the wall, which was utterly dwarfed by Megatron's bulk. The berth squeaked and groaned as Megatron sat down, massive arms curled protectively around the sparkling he held cradled against his chest. 

"What…?" Optimus gave up on the question half-asked, most of his system still locked up with shock. 

"Take him." Megatron held out the sparkling in his hands. It beeped, alarmed, and clung to his thumbs, tiny wings spreading for balance. 

"How…?"

"How do you think, Prime?" Megatron snarled. "Even you can't possibly be this naive. Take him, already." He winced as he stood, but covered it quickly. A few splatters of dark blue fluid had dried gummily in the seams of his abdominal plates, leaving no doubt about where the sparkling had come from. Not that there'd really been another option, down here in the otherwise empty mine. 

Optimus awkwardly accepted the sparkling when Megatron pushed it into his arms, leaving him no choice but to take it. It cheeped in protest, tiny arms stretching clumsily for Megatron—for its carrier.

"Will you find him a home?" Megatron asked. His faceplates twisted when Optimus took too long to reply. Optimus's processor was still lagging, trying to deal with this whole situation. "He's innocent of my sins, Prime. He doesn't deserve this life. There must be other orphans of this war. No one needs to know where he came from."

He went awkwardly to one knee, folding his great bulk down until he had to look up to meet Optimus's optics. "You'll take him out of here, if you meant a single word you said in any of your speeches. You didn't fight this war to leave a bitlet growing up to darkness and hard labor."

Optimus stared. Megatron had never asked him for anything in all the time he'd known him. Even facing total defeat, he'd not so much as pled for his life. He was pleading now. 

"I'll take care of him," Optimus said. 

Megatron's entire frame sagged in relief. "Go on, then. Can't you see it's cruel to him to drag this out?" 

Optimus looked down at the sparkling, who was cheeping louder now, tiny body squirming in Optimus's hands as he fought to get to his creator. 

"Go!" Megatron snarled. 

Optimus turned towards the door, walking stiffly; his overstrained reality matrix had caused several deep system checks, and half his sensor-net was still rebooting. 

"His name is Cloudwing," Megatron said abruptly. 

Optimus paused with his hand on the door. "That's not a Decepticon name."

Megatron snorted. "They'd only change it, if it was." He lifted a hand, as if reaching for the sparkling in Optimus's arms, and then dropped it again. "You'll make sure they won't find out where he came from? He'll have a chance?"

"I promise," Optimus said.

He had a small subspace pocket in the side of his chest compartment. It had just enough space to fit Cloudwing inside. The sparkling squirmed and whined as Optimus placed him gently inside the narrow space, but it was the safest way to conceal him, and he'd have to get him outside somehow without being seen by the guards.

"Wait," Megatron said abruptly. 

Optimus paused, the panel he'd been closing to conceal the sparkling sliding open again. Megatron took a step towards him. He had to bend over a bit so his helm didn't hit the low ceiling, but even so he loomed over Optimus. Optimus stilled himself with an effort as Megatron reached out, gently touching the back of his claws to Cloudwing's faceplates. The sparkling's unhappy squirming stopped immediately. 

"Be brave," Megatron said, his voice a low rumble, more gentle than Optimus had ever heard him sound. And then he took an abrupt step back. 

"Go, Prime."

Optimus turned back one last time when he was closing the door behind him. Megatron was watching him go, his face calm—no. His face was utterly still, devoid of all expression. By his side, his empty hands curled slowly into fists.

* * *

The guards watched him curiously on his way out of the mine. They had to be wondering what Megatron had wanted. But no one asked. Optimus had to fight the urge to put his hand over the subspace pocket hiding the sparkling. It'd only make him look more conspicuous.

It was a relief to leave the oppressive tunnels. The sunlight outside was almost painfully bright before his optics adjusted. 

How long had it been since Megatron had seen the sun?

Megatron had brought this on himself, he reminded himself. If anyone deserved to be in prison…

He couldn't seem to stop thinking about the look on Megatron's face when he'd taken the sparkling away. 

"Thank you for coming, lord prime," the overseer said, when Optimus reached the guard booth. "Should we expect any more trouble?"

"No," Optimus said. The guards were still watching him. It made him want to squirm. He'd never been a good liar. He could only be grateful no one dared to ask him directly about what had happened in Megatron's cell. He didn't usually like to lean on the power of his title, but just now he was extremely grateful for its protection.

He pulled out onto the road with a sigh of relief, feeling the guards' curious stares on his taillights as he drove away. 

The mine had been on the far outskirts of Kaon once. But after the war, with refugees crowding the city, a shanty town of improvised tenements had sprung up in Vortex quarter, the abandoned area around the mine. The closest of them had been torn down for security when the guards had moved Megatron into the mine, but the rest were still up, leaning precariously over the road. 

Mechs watched him from the windows as he drove past. Their faintly hostile looks made him feel uneasy, and then guilty for it. None of them were a threat to the sparkling. The mechs who lived here were the poorest of the poor, all of them spindly and barely armored. They were watching him to make sure he wasn't a threat to _them_. 

Evening traffic was picking up as he made his way into Kaon central. Optimus threaded his way through the dense crowds, all his sensors on full alert in a way they hadn't been since the war. It was an enormous relief when he could finally close the door to his own apartment behind himself. He let himself lean heavily against the wall, giving his system a moment to settle down, and then finally freed the angrily chirping sparkling from his subspace pocket. 

He held Cloudwing in the cup of his hands, looking down at him in dismay. 

"Now what am I going to do with you?"

* * *

"This better be good," Ratchet groused as he slammed into Optimus's apartment, throwing the door shut behind himself. "I've been at the clinic since an hour before dawn. The last thing I need is to be transporting my whole equipment halfway across town in my free time. And on no explanation whatsoever, I might add. _What_ on Cybertron—" he interrupted himself, finally catching sight of the sparkling in Optimus's arms. Cloudwing, who'd finally settled down into recharge only twenty kliks ago, stirred, activated his optics, and let out a piercing wail. 

Ratchet took a half-step backwards, looking appalled. For such a tiny bitlet, Cloudwing had a very well-powered vocoder.

"Who decided to let you look after a sparkling that young? Do you even know anything about sparklings?"

"No. I know _nothing_ , all right?" Optimus snapped, possibly a little too sharply. Cloudwing was transmitting on the emergency frequency again, when he'd only _just_ gotten him to stop. It was nothing so organized as an actual message, just a hardcoded, wordless distress signal. Calling for his carrier. Optimus had spent the past few hours listening to it, rocking the sparkling in his arms, pacing desperately up and down with no idea what to do. It had felt like an eternity until Ratchet finally came through the door. "It was an emergency."

"I should think so," Ratchet said. He'd moved closer, sensors out, scanning the sparkling. "He's still got amnioplasma in his joints, he can't be more than a cycle past emergence. And that aux power cable wasn't severed correctly. Look at that fraying. What, did they _bite_ it off? Who gave you that sparkling, Optimus?" 

Cloudwing let out a plaintive beep at Ratchet's severe tone. Ratchet's seamed old face softened in a way Optimus had never seen on him before. "Yes, yes, you're all right. We'll get you taken care of in just a klik, and then I'll have a word with your negligent idiot of a carrier, yes I will," he told Cloudwing, in a completely different voice. 

Optimus stared at him. Everyone had some vestigial carrier coding that tended to activate around sparklings, and if you didn't stop it it _would_ automatically tune your voice to a pitch designed to be received by developing audials. But seeing _Ratchet_ coo like that made his processor start in on yet another futile systems check.

"Well, let's have it. Whose is he?" Ratchet snapped, fully back to his usual irascible tone. 

Optimus sighed, venting a cloud of steam from the pipe on his shoulder. His emotional coprocessors had been trying to overheat on him all day. "You might want to sit down for this."

* * *

" _Megatron_ ," Ratchet repeated incredulously, the third time he'd said it. "The slagmaker himself. Who'd have thought. And you being such an _adorable_ little bitlet," he cooed to Cloudwing, his voice sliding into that higher register again. "It _is_ rather obvious once you know, I suppose. Look at the shape of his helm, and those flight engines. Won't be as big as his carrier, but he'll have some power under the hood."

"Is he… all right? He's been refusing his fuel all day. I got a couple different kinds of sparkling-grade energon, but he won't touch any of it, and when I tried to pour a little bit in his intake, he spat it right back out." Optimus tried not to sound as desperate as he felt, but his voice got away from him by the end of that sentence.

Ratchet sighed. "Physically—well enough, considering. He's undersized for his age, he's got some metal fatigue around his seams, and the plating's too thin on his wing panels. I don't suppose Megatron's had his supplements while he was carrying, and he's been reformatted so often…. There's not one mech in ten left with a working forge after this damned war, you know, and Megatron's the _last_ mech I'd have expected would still be capable of carrying. It's a miracle he didn't have _more_ complications."

He shook his helm. "But there's nothing wrong that won't fix itself with time and good fuel. As far as his processor health goes—we'll have to see. It's no good for them to be separated from their carriers this early. This isn't the first sparkling I've seen refuse to fuel. But don't overheat your risk projectors now, there's a couple things we can try that might work."

"And what if they don't?" Optimus asked, his tank churning queasily.

Ratchet didn't reply. 

"Ratchet," Optimus said pleadingly. 

"Give it some time. Things will probably work themselves out," Ratchet said, but he didn't entirely sound like he believed it himself.

* * *

"Come on, just a few drops. Please," Optimus begged. His vocoder crackled, and the power management display in his HUD was shading into the red. It was his second night-cycle with no recharge. Cloudwing was a limp weight in his arms, wings drooping. He was still broadcasting on the emergency frequencies, not even a distress call anymore, just a painful rush of static, grating constantly against Optimus's sensors. He had the signal dampeners around his flat working at maximum so his neighbors wouldn't hear. 

"He wouldn't want you to starve yourself. He gave you away so you'd be all right. Because he wants you to be okay," he told Cloudwing, and only realized when a fat drop of coolant splashed onto the sparkling's plating that he was crying. 

He thought of the expression on Megatron's face when he'd handed Cloudwing over, the way his face had shut down, the hard determination in the set of his shoulders. Megatron had been trying not to show it, and Optimus had been too flustered to process it properly at the time, but looking back, it was obvious how hard it'd been on Megatron to give the sparkling up. He'd trusted Optimus with him. And now Optimus couldn't even get this most basic thing right. He couldn't even get Cloudwing to fuel. 

Optimus felt another drop of fluid running down his cheek. Primus, he really needed some recharge. "He'd want you to be all right," he repeated pleadingly. "He loves you."

He tilted the tiny cube in his hand, tipping the smallest drop of fuel into Cloudwing's mouth. Cloudwing shook his head with an angry wail, pushing the cube away and scattering the fuel in drops all over Optimus's windshield. 

"What am I going to do with you? I'm so sorry, little one. I don't know what to do." His hands shook as he cradled the sparkling to his frame.

He'd spent the past two days trying desperately to find someone better suited to care for Cloudwing. Maybe a Decepticon couple who'd been through the work release program, someone settled. Mechs who'd had a sparkling before. There were plenty of former Decepticons who'd only been associated with the movement and the war in the most peripheral way, and who must've concluded their sentences by now. 

But the department of rehabilitation hadn't been giving him anything but the vaguest replies to his inquiries. Apparently there wasn't _anyone_ in a position to take in a sparkling right now. 

There was an adoption program for Autobot orphans, but they asked a lot more questions than Optimus was willing to answer. Megatron had been right, it wouldn't do Cloudwing any favors if people found out who his carrier was. 

And none of that was going to matter if Optimus couldn't manage to get him fueled, and soon. Cloudwing's optics were already starting to dim, running lights turning off one by one in energy conservation mode. 

Optimus activated his comm. 

"It's the middle of the goddamn night cycle. What's your emergency?" Ratchet's voice rumbled down the line, the comfortingly familiar tone that had coached Optimus through a hundred bad situations. Some of the tension released from his cables. 

"He won't take any fuel, no matter what I do. Please, Ratch, there has to be _something_."

Ratchet sighed. For a moment, nothing but static came crackling down the line. "There are some options. You're not going to like any of them."

* * *

Going down into the mine wasn't any more pleasant the second time around, but this time, Optimus didn't let it slow him down. Cloudwing, who'd been a limp, quiet weight in his subspace pocket for the entire drive to the mine, perked up as soon as Optimus started descending. Optimus let him out into his arms once they were alone, and he spontaneously extruded several different sensor nubs and a tiny antenna, which he waved around excitedly until he had it oriented towards the deepest part of the mine.

Optimus wasn't proud of the mix of threats and outright bribery he'd used to get the guards' commander to let him go down alone, but he was glad he'd persisted now, because once they got close to Megatron's cell, it became impossible to keep Cloudwing quiet. He was sitting up in Optimus' palms, wings perked up, babbling in a mix of chirps and clicks, every sensor focused on Megatron's door.

Optimus had thought Megatron would be happy to see his sparkling again. He wasn't prepared for the way Megatron's face collapsed into a look of total anguish when he saw Cloudwing in his arms. 

" _No one_ would take him? Couldn't stand to keep up a lie for three pit-spawned cycles even for the sake of a sparkling, Prime?" Megatron snarled. His huge clawed hands were gentle when he took Cloudwing from Optimus's hands and cradled him to his chest, but his plating clamped down tight, defensive, and there was a fine shiver rattling his frame. 

"No! No, it's all right. I've taken him in," Optimus said hastily, and was even more unprepared for the spasm of relief that twisted Megatron's face. He'd not expected that bit of news to be met with a lot of enthusiasm, and had been composing his explanation in the back of his processor the whole way down. 

"It's just for now. I tried to find a Decepticon who'd take him in—someone who's been through rehabilitation or the work-release program. I thought it'd be nice if he could be raised in his own culture. But it turned out no one was really in a position to take in a sparkling. I'm sorry. I tried—"

"You'd be an acceptable guardian," Megatron grated out abruptly, breaking in on his stream of justifications. "If it has to be an Autobot."

"I've been trying my best," Optimus said, although he couldn't help but feel that his best hadn't been very good. Cloudwing was chirping happily as Megatron gently tweaked his antennae. He'd never seen the sparkling this animated even once in the three cycles he'd had him. Even his running lights had come back on, which made the fuel use algorithm running mercilessly in the back of Optimus's processor pop up yet another warning. He knew Cloudwing had to be deep in the red by now. But surely, if anything could help, _this_ would.

Megatron was quiet for a long moment, petting Cloudwing, who was squirming excitedly in his hold and beeping at him.

"Why are you here, then?" he said eventually. "If you've come to taunt me with him—"

"Oh for pit's sake," Optimus snapped, but he couldn't really muster the right amount of outrage. Shame was stinging at his circuits. "He won't take his fuel. We've tried everything. Ratchet says it happens sometimes, when they're separated from their carriers too early. He says we could drill an auxiliary line into his tank, but—" 

He paused. Megatron had cupped both hands protectively around Cloudwing's body, spikes of armor rising up from the back of his wrists. 

"Yeah, I didn't like the idea either. I thought we could try this first."

He handed Megatron the tiny cube of fuel he'd tucked in his subspace. 

"What's wrong with that fuel?" Megatron asked, squinting suspiciously at the fluorescent lavender shine of it, a lurid glow in the dim light of the cell. He dipped a finger inside, obviously running a chemical analysis, and his optics widened in surprise even as Optimus opened his mouth to respond. "There's trigonium in this."

"Just a few drops. It's the only kind of fuel he'd take even a little sip of. Ratchet said he needs the energy, and it's easy to process."

"It also costs a fortune."

Optimus twitched a shoulder. "It's all right. People keep insisting on paying me ridiculous amounts of credits so I'll show up and give a speech they can completely fail to listen to." 

He regretted his bitter tone immediately. He wasn't going to complain to _Megatron_ , who was locked down here in the dark, about the hardships of the luxurious life of a public figurehead. Even if Megatron had brought this judgment on himself. 

"Anyway, trigonium's not as expensive as it used to be. Seems someone's been mining unusual amounts of tris-proton energon lately."

"I suppose I ought to be happy it's doing someone some good," Megatron said dryly. 

He lifted the cube to Cloudwing's face, gently tipping a few drops into his intake. Optimus watched in desperate hope, hardly daring to make a sound, even his fans stalling out. Cloudwing sputtered, flailed his arms, and twisted up his face. Megatron and Optimus shared a look of perfectly synchronized panic. And then Cloudwing licked the corners of his mouth, swallowed, and opened his mouth with a squawk. 

Megatron huffed out a puff of air and tilted the cube for him again. It took them a bit to get the rhythm of it down, but then Cloudwing started drinking greedily, clumsily grabbing for the cube and straining his whole body towards the fuel until it was all Megatron could do to keep him from tipping himself headfirst into it. 

Megatron looked down at his sparkling, a fiery red glow to his optics, the corners of his mouth twitching up in just the faintest hint of a smile. Optimus felt his fuel pump stutter. 

"We only have one joor," he said quietly.

Megatron looked up at him, the smile fading from his face, his mouth a hard line again. 

"It was all I could get. I had to bribe the guards as it was," Optimus said, fighting the urge to apologize.

"Of course," Megatron said. He looked down at Cloudwing, who'd finished his cube and was beeping angrily at the sudden lack of fuel. "Did you bring more of this?"

"Ratchet said no more than one cube today. His tank's going to need some time to adjust," Optimus said apologetically. Cloudwing was grabbing at the cube with clumsy hands, as if he was trying to make more fuel appear by sheer willpower. Megatron gently pulled it away and dispersed it. 

"Hush now," he said, to Cloudwing's protesting beeps. "A warrior doesn't whine. It's undignified." His voice was gentle, almost teasing; Optimus had never heard him sound anything like this. 

Megatron shrugged his heavy chest plates aside, armor splitting open with a grinding whine until a blaze of spark light spilled out. Cloudwing let out a delighted squeal and squirmed until he could cuddle up tight to Megatron's chest, patting his spark crystal and cooing happily. 

Optimus stared. Ratchet _had_ said that Cloudwing ought to have as much exposure to Megatron's signature spark energy as he could, but Optimus hadn't actually thought he'd be able to convince Megatron to open up his chest plates in his presence. Just the thought of exposing his spark like that made his plating crawl. 

There were _scratches_ on Megatron's spark crystal, he realized, swallowing against a rising feeling of horror: deep gouges near the center seam, as if someone had used a tool to force them open. 

"Enjoying the show?" Megatron said drily, and Optimus realized belatedly that he was _staring at Megatron's exposed spark._ He tore his optics away, feeling his face plates heat. 

"Sorry," he squeaked out. He stared determinedly at the wall beside Megatron's berth, and startled badly when Megatron said his name. 

"Optimus." Megatron slapped the berth beside him. "Sit down. You're setting off my combat protocols, hovering like that."

Optimus hesitated, but Megatron was glaring at him, optics flaring impatiently, so Optimus hesitantly sat down beside him. Megatron's bulk didn't leave much space on the berth, which creaked alarmingly under their combined weight. Even sitting as far to the side as he could, their shoulders brushed. The spikes on Megatron's pauldrons scraped gently against Optimus armor. Megatron was putting out heat like a furnace with his chest plates open, and the reflections of his spark light played over the wall opposite the berth. Optimus stared straight ahead and tried to be as still as he could. 

The time was ticking down in his HUD: ten kliks remaining. Five. One. 

"Megatron. The joor's up," Optimus said tentatively. 

"Yes," Megatron said. He didn't move. 

Optimus slowly turned his head. Megatron had his chest plates half shut now, forming a cocoon around Cloudwing, who was sleeping in the cup of Megatron's palms with his face firmly smudged against Megatron's spark crystal. 

"I'll bring him back tomorrow," Optimus said. His optics felt scratchy and hot. He firmly suppressed his body's attempts to run some coolant over them. He could only imagine what Megatron would say if he caught him crying. 

"No," Megatron said. Optimus looked up at him in surprise. 

"Not if it can be avoided." Megatron stroked his thumbs over Cloudwing's back. "Every contact with me might lead to him being discovered. If you can get him to fuel, there's no reason to expose him to the risk." 

His voice was a rough, painful scrape. His hands cupped a little more tightly around Cloudwing's sleeping frame. 

Optimus knew he needed to go, but he still hesitated. The thought of taking Cloudwing from Megatron's protective grasp made him feel like a monster, especially knowing how Cloudwing had reacted the day before. At least he was recharging peacefully now. 

"With any luck he'll stay in recharge," Optimus said hopefully. 

Megatron was very still for a moment longer, and then he pulled Cloudwing away from his spark, closed up his chest plates, and laid Cloudwing gently into Optimus's palms. Cloudwing lit up his optics, looked around, clutched Optimus's fingers, and let out a sparkrending wail. 

They both flinched. 

"I suppose it was too much to hope for," Megatron said. He was staring straight ahead, optics fixed on the wall of his cell, as if he couldn't bear looking at his sparkling's distress. 

"Go, Optimus. Now." 

Optimus pushed to his feet. He knew he wasn't making this any easier on any of them by drawing it out, but he still felt a sickening wave of guilt when he closed the door to the cell behind him. 

Ratchet had thought if they could only get Cloudwing fueling successfully once, he might keep doing it whether Megatron was there or not. With any luck, none of them would have to go through this again. 

And then Megatron would never see his sparkling again. 

Cloudwing didn't want to go into his subspace pocket. He wailed and fought until Optimus had to resort to stuffing him in with gentle force, feeling ever more like a monster. There wasn't any other safe way to get him out of the mine undetected. 

"It's all right, little one. It'll all be all right," he said. He could feel Cloudwing squirming angrily in his pocket, not reassured in the least, and sighed. "I know. I wouldn't believe myself either."

* * *

Cloudwing still refused to fuel. 

"He'll get used to you eventually," Ratchet said, but his voice lacked the calm certainty he usually had when he gave advice on medical issues. Optimus suspected Ratchet was almost as much at sea as he was. Ratchet had never worked with sparklings. He'd been a trauma surgeon before the war, and after the war…. Well. There weren't many sparklings left, and hardly even any fertile mechs. 

"As much as I hate to say this, for now our best bet is to let him spend as much time with his carrier as we can," Ratchet said. 

Optimus bit down hard on his secret relief. Anyone would feel bad having to separate a sparkling from their carrier, that was all. He didn't want Ratchet to make anything of it.

* * *

"I see Autobot incompetence has no limits. How hard can it be to convince a sparkling to fuel?" Megatron said, although he didn't seem able to look away from Cloudwing in his hands as he was saying it, which took all the sting out of the insult. Even if the guilt routine Optimus had been running non-stop for days pinged him a pointed reminder. 

Cloudwing happily let _Megatron_ fuel him, sucking down a cube and a half of trigonium-infused fuel in no time flat. He'd already gained a bit of weight just from yesterday's single successful feed. If the size and fuel requirement projections Ratchet had calculated for him were right, they were going to have to wean him off the trigonium pretty quickly, or even Optimus's generous financial reserves were going to wear thin soon. 

After he'd fed, Megatron let Cloudwing curl up against his spark crystal again, where he happily went to sleep. 

It turned into a strange sort of routine. Every evening he'd drive to the mine, pay his bribes to the overseer, try his best not to meet the guards' curious and judgmental stares, and go down to meet Megatron. Cloudwing was growing a little every day, still small enough to sit on Optimus's hands but twice as heavy as he'd been to start with. He still refused to take fuel from anyone but Megatron himself, but he was perking up, sleeping less, crawling around Optimus's apartment and scanning everything he could get his hands on. 

Before he knew it it'd been a decacycle, and then two, and then the overseer of the guards started to ask questions he really didn't want to answer, like how long he intended to keep doing this. The mech didn't keep pushing once Optimus shoved another handful of shanix into his hands, but Optimus was painfully aware that their time was running out.

"What is it?" Megatron asked, once Optimus had sat down in his usual spot on the berth beside him. 

Optimus twitched guilty. Was he so easy to read?

"You don't have to answer this if you don't want to," he started carefully. He'd gotten the strong impression that Megatron didn't want to talk about this. "But… the other progenitor…?"

He barely knew himself what he wanted the answer to be. Ratchet thought the sparkling might recognize his sire's EM field just like he did Megatron's, which meant there might be another mech out there who could get Cloudwing to fuel. But if his progenitor was one of Megatron's lieutenants, that didn't solve their problem; all of Decepticon High Command was locked up in a maximum security prison, and getting Cloudwing to them would if anything be harder than smuggling him into the mine. And if it _wasn't_ one of Megatron's mechs….

Megatron snorted, optics narrowing. "Even you cannot possibly be this naive. Or does the math escape you? I'm not sure myself how long his carrying period was, come to think of it. Although I suppose a few ten-cycles more or less don't make a difference either way." Megatron's voice took on a sharper edge. "I was awaiting my trial in prison at the time of his conception. Do you imagine they let us have conjugal visits?" 

Optimus shut off his whole facial circuitry for a moment, before he lost control of his expression. Megatron had said it almost casually, with no more than a bit of bored contempt in his voice. Optimus didn't think he'd appreciate a big reaction. 

On some level, he'd suspected it all along. The higher-ranking Decepticons had been separated from each other immediately after their capture. No, of course Megatron hadn't been given any time alone with any of his people. And then there were Cloudwing's blue optics.

But he hadn't wanted it confirmed.

Optimus hadn't even turned his face back on yet, but apparently his thoughts were obvious anyway, because Megatron made an exasperated sound. 

"Don't look so shocked, Prime. It wasn't exactly a surprise." Cloudwing stirred unhappily at the cutting edge to his tone, and Megatron immediately gentled his voice. "It's the sort of thing mechs do to their prisoners."

"They don't— _your_ mechs didn't." Optimus's voice crackled with static. The Decepticons hadn't been gentle with their prisoners. But he'd never had cause to worry about that specific kind of assault at their hands. 

"They knew what would happen if I caught them at it," Megatron said, still in that incongruously gentle tone. He never raised his voice when he had Cloudwing in his arms. 

"Did they at least—when you reported it—"

Megatron blew out an explosive snort of a laugh. Cloudwing squeaked. " _Report_ it. For the love of Primus. Are you trying to convince yourself it must've been one cracked crystal in a good bunch? There were cameras in all our cells, Prime. They knew."

Optimus shuttered his optics, swallowing hard against his churning tanks. " _Do_ you know his designation?" he asked. If there was video evidence, he might still be able to do _something_. 

"No, and I don't care to know it," Megatron said dismissively, without looking up from Cloudwing, and then suddenly his plating bristled until it made him look half again as large. He snapped his helm up with his optics glowing virulently. "And I will _never_ permit Cloudwing to have an astrosecond of contact with that mech, so if that's why you're asking—"

"Primus, no," Optimus said, appalled. 

"I won't thank you if you go making accusations on my behalf, either." Megatron's voice was hardly any less sharp, although his spikes were smoothing down. "I have no interest in turning myself into a public spectacle."

Optimus looked away. It was Megatron's choice, of course, and Optimus's desperate need to _do something_ in light of this revelation wasn't his problem to deal with.

"The—the other prisoners…are they…?" He had to reset his crackling vocalizer. 

Megatron shrugged. "They kept me separated until they brought me here, but I don't see why they'd have been treated any better. I suppose none of them had enraged the Autobots as _personally._ But on the other hand, none of them were about to go up in front of a bunch of cameras for a public show trial, so no need to keep them dent-free or well-fed, either."

"They're prisoners of war. There's rules—oversight—they shouldn't be mistreated," Optimus said, swallowing his rising feeling of unease. He'd had his own fights with the council; he hadn't been spending a lot of time on the issue of the Decepticon prisoners. But he knew there were mechs charged with making sure they were treated fairly—there were committees—

Committees. Even inside his own processor, it sounded thin and insufficient. 

Megatron shrugged his shoulders. "Believe what you like, Autobot. What difference does it make, now?"

Optimus leaned heavily against the rough wall behind the berth. Megatron had curled up a little, his arms a sheltering wall around Cloudwing. The massive armored plates of his forearms had grown thin with metal fatigue, consequences of carrying a sparkling with insufficient fuel and no supplements at all. Dust and grit clotted every joint. There was a fine grinding noise whenever he moved. He looked tired. Defeated. 

There'd been times during the war when Optimus had almost been able to hate him. But even then, what he'd wanted was Megatron in prison, not… not any of this. 

"Are you happy?" Megatron gritted out suddenly. 

The question was so far from the direction of his own thoughts that it took Optimus a moment to process it. _Happy?_ He could barely remember the last time he'd felt happy. Certainly not any time recently, with large parts of Cybertron still in ash and ruin, and the pitiful remnants of their society struggling to recover from the war. 

Megatron jerked his chin impatiently. "You won the war for them. Their great hero. Primus's chosen one. You could've had everything you wanted. None of them would've hesitated to confirm you in the position of Prime. And instead you handed the primacy back to _Sentinel_." 

Optimus winced. It'd seemed like an obvious decision at the time he'd made it. Megatron's words prodded directly at the secret regret that'd grown more sore every cycle since then. "The primacy was his by right. You know they only made me Prime because they thought Sentinel was dead. What did you want me to do, Megatron? Stage a coup for the position? Start _another_ war? I stepped back because I had to. There can't be two primes."

"There are now," Megatron said. "And yet you left all the power in Sentinel's hands." His mouth twisted in disgust when he said the name. " _Are_ you happy? Did you get whatever it was you wanted? What did you even fight the slagging war for, if you didn't want the victory?"

Megatron's voice was a hard snap. His cables creaked with tension. Cloudwing stirred restlessly against his chest. 

Optimus shook his helm. He barely knew what to say to that. No. He hadn't been _happy_. He'd been tired. Exhausted. Their side had won, but it hadn't felt like a victory at the time. Cybertron had been a bombed-out ruin, Iacon with its mighty shields the only city left standing, energon reserves depleted. The last scattered pockets of Decepticon resistance had kept erupting into violence long past the official ceasefire, yet another trickle of deaths coming in every time he'd thought it was done for good. 

And then finally it'd been over for real. The long quiet, after the last of the Decepticons had been put into prison and the deaths finally stopped. The almost nauseating relief of hearing that Sentinel had been freed from Decepticon imprisonment alive. He'd been so _grateful_ to be able to step back and hand off the terrible responsibility of the primacy to someone else. Someone who knew what he was doing. Sentinel had been in power long before Optimus had even been forged. He'd been a hero of the Quintesson wars. Optimus was an archivist who'd ended up in his position by an accident of fate, no military experience, not half the age of the youngest-ever prime before him. He'd been horribly aware of how badly in over his head he was. 

"You know I never wanted this war. I never wanted power," Optimus said. 

Megatron snorted. "I know that _now_. Things might've turned out differently if I'd believed it at the time."

Optimus sighed. No, Megatron certainly hadn't believed him, back then. They'd gone to the High Council together. Optimus had only come to plead Megatron's case. And then the council had handed him the primacy. 

In retrospect, he could see why they'd done it. The rebellion had already been too big to be suppressed. Sentinel had been captured, presumed dead. The Council had needed to do something to placate the masses, and they weren't ever going to hand any power to Megatron: a former miner, and a mech who'd already been reformatted twice. Half the council had still been Functionists back then, and Megatron was everything they feared: living proof that a mech's origins didn't have to define him. 

Better to give some power to Orion Pax, an archivist and a mid-caste bot. He'd been a much more palatable face to the rebellion. Looking back, it made perfect sense if you knew the way the councilors thought. But at the time Optimus hadn't expected it at all. And of course Megatron had seen it as a betrayal. _That_ was obvious in retrospect, too, and another thing he hadn't seen coming at the time. He'd thought, back then, that Megatron knew him better than that. 

"Did you really think that was my plan all along? That I'd joined you just to try and usurp your power?"

Megatron shrugged. "It's what I would've done."

Primus, he could be so _frustrating_. "I was an _archivist_ ," Optimus snapped. "I was _happy_ being an archivist. I joined the rebellion because you were the one who convinced me that things needed to change. The last thing I ever wanted was to end up in command of an army." 

Even now, just calling up the memory files brought back the sickening terror of those early moments of the war. He'd been utterly unprepared for any of it: the weight of command, the knowledge that mechs died for every one of his mistakes. He could still remember every one of their designations without even having to access his archival files. The constant _what ifs_. If he'd been faster, smarter, better prepared. If somehow he'd managed to find the right words to make Megatron stop and listen. 

He turned his helm to look at Megatron. "You didn't give me a choice when you started tearing everything down. You razed Praxus to the ground for turning on you."

"I let my rage get the better of me. It was a mistake. Tactically and morally. One of many," Megatron said flatly. He made a sweeping gesture encompassing the claustrophobic little room. "I've had a lot of time alone in the dark to regret the choices I've made."

"That's all you're going to say?" Optimus snarled. His engine growled angrily. "A _mistake?_ Do you have any idea how many mechs died, in that one city alone? It's not all right just because you're sorry!" He gestured sharply towards Cloudwing. "There were sparklings in Praxus, too!"

Megatron flinched faintly, his hands cupping more tightly around Cloudwing's back. "I know. I'm not trying to make excuses for what I did. But I wasn't wrong about one thing, was I? There was never going to be peaceful change." He gestured upwards, towards the surface. "Your side won, and now everything's back just the way it was."

Optimus's engine revved again. He found himself sitting up straighter, fists clenching, fighting the urge to seize Megatron by the chest plates and shake him. "That's slag and you know it! It's nothing like it used to be. I'm sorry for what happened to you. There's no excuse for that. But plenty of things have changed for the better. There's not a single Functionist left on the Council. There's a form of voting rights for the frame-disadvantaged—"

"Ah, yes. Those proxy votes for the Disposables. How that's working out?"

"They don't like to be called that," Optimus snapped, because, if he was honest with himself, it was easier than answering the question Megatron had actually asked. 

"Oh, they don't, do they? Are we still calling them, what was it, _frame-disadvantaged mechs?"_  
_  
_ "FDMs, yes. And if you can't see why they'd like that better than _Disposables_ —"

"Oh no, I see perfectly well," Megatron said, his mouth curling up into a cruel smirk. "And how do the _frame-disadvantaged_ like having their voting rights restricted?" 

"They didn't use to _have_ any voting rights," Optimus snapped. "The proxy vote isn't perfect—"

"It isn't? I wouldn't have guessed." Megatron's voice dripped with sarcasm.

Optimus wanted to punch him in his smug face. "I'm working on it," he managed, gritting his teeth through a vivid full-sensory memory file of Sentinel's hand heavy on his shoulders, Sentinel's grave voice:

 _Be realistic, Optimus. Do you really think a bunch of mechs with mass-produced two-bit processors can make an informed choice on who should be representing them on complicated questions like taxation and infrastructure? Some of them rely on_ static random-access memory _for their main data storage. The proxy vote is for their protection—they deserve to have someone well-informed represent them in the election._

He could just imagine what Megatron would say to _that_. And he wouldn't even be wrong. It wasn't like Optimus hadn't had those same thoughts himself, during the endless frustrating cycles of arguing with the Council over even the slightest of concessions. 

Optimus gritted his teeth. "So it's not perfect, yet. I'm _trying_ to change that! Things are still so much better than they used to be. The class system's been dismantled. There's no laws against reformatting for whatever job you want. A miner could study to be a medic now. Isn't that what you wanted, once?"

Megatron snorted. "Yeah? When's the last time you actually talked to a miner, or someone from one of those lower classes that don't exist anymore? Do you have any idea what it costs to have a full frame reformat done?"

He spread his hands, as if inviting Optimus to look at him, the magnificent frame he'd had himself reformatted into. "I made ten thousand shanix a fight as a gladiator, and I could barely scrape the cash together. Where's a miner going to get that sort of money? Or a sweeper? Or a waste disposal bot? You went back to your archive when the war ended, didn't you? How many heavy labor frames have you hired recently? Any miners working that archive?" 

Megatron made a sharp, dismissive gesture. "Of course not. Do you even have any miners _left_ who aren't sitting in your prisons right now, or serving forced labor terms?"

"We don't have much of _anything_ left," Optimus snarled. "Yes, a lot of the miners joined your side. A lot of the fliers, too, after you let Shockwave bomb Vos and blame it on us. Most of our energon refinement specialists died when you blew up the university in Praxus. Iacon was the only livable city left before we rebuilt Kaon—because _you_ bombed the rest of them into rubble. So maybe if mechs aren't living in comfort right now, if mechs are _starving_ , or they don't have the shanix they need to fulfill their dreams, maybe it's not just down to something the _Council_ has done!"

Cloudwing made an anxious whimpering noise. Optimus jerked back, abruptly realizing that he was looming over Megatron. He'd seized Megatron by the shoulder almost hard enough to dent, and his other hand was braced on the wall beside Megatron's helm. Steam was rising from his exhaust pipes, and combat subroutines had come up at the edges of his HUD. Megatron hadn't made any move to fight him off. 

Optimus shut off combat mode with an effort, collapsing heavily back down onto the berth. 

"I told you, I make no excuses," Megatron said. "I tried to make things better, and I failed. I caused a lot of suffering and gained nothing. But _you_." His optics flashed so bright they were almost white for a second. "They handed power to you on a platter! You could've made a real change, and instead you stepped down and gave everything up to that _predacon_ of a prime!"

Megatron was venting hard, too, fans whirring, heat wafting out from under the edges of his plates. Optimus braced himself for an eruption of violence, but instead Megatron brought himself under control, armored spikes settling back down. He stroked Cloudwing's side apologetically when the sparkling made an unhappy noise.

That was new. Megatron had never been much good at tempering himself before. But then, as Megatron had said, he'd spent a lot of time alone in the dark. That sort of thing changed a mech, just as the war had changed Optimus. 

"I'm trying," Optimus said, feeling suddenly exhausted. "I know that doesn't count for much with you. And I know progress hasn't been as fast as it could be. But I'm working to change what I can."

Megatron only snorted.

They were silent for a long moment. Both of them still fuming, Optimus suspected, and yet neither of them willing to let their argument escalate again with the sparkling in the room. 

"Joor's up," Megatron said eventually. He laid Cloudwing's sleepy weight into Optimus's outstretched arms, shoulders stiffening when Cloudwing made a desolate noise. 

"Go, Prime. And maybe talk to someone who's not a librarian or an upper class mech some time."

* * *

The usual group of four guards picked him up at the uppermost tunnel and escorted him the rest of the way out of the mine. It had mostly been the same mechs every cycle, but today was the first time Optimus looked at them more consciously. Two of them were classical enforcer frame types, with big sensor-studded doorwings. Pursuit and Lasersight, he thought their names were. Another was a tall mech with a high-speed two-wheeler alt, probably some sort of courier. The last one was a heavy-set mech with a row of bared connectors on his arm that suggested that some sort of large tool had been crudely removed. Optimus had seen that blocky helm shape before, too. 

"Drill-Bit, isn't it?" he asked. "May I have a word?"

Drill-But gave him a startled look that shaded quickly into anxious concern. "Yes, my lord prime?" 

"It's just Optimus," he said gently. "Sentinel Prime's the one with the titles."

"Yes, my Lord Optimus," Drill-Bit said hastily. 

Optimus sighed, but didn't want to correct him yet again. He could tell he'd already unsettled the poor mech enough. 

"We could step into the guards' breakroom? It's nothing special, but…." Drill-Bit trailed off nervously.

"That'll do perfectly," Optimus said. 

Drill-Bit started to look trapped as soon as the door closed behind the two of them. "What can I do for you, my lord?" 

"You were a miner once, weren't you? May I ask what made you want to become an Enforcer?" Optimus asked.

Drill-Bit flinched. 

"With all due respect, my lord prime, I did very well in all of the aptitude tests! My reviews have all been outstanding, you can ask my superiors. There's been no complaint, on anything!"

"I don't doubt it," Optimus said quickly. The obvious anxiety in Drill-Bit's face was unsettling. He tried to keep his voice warm, reassuring. "I was only curious about the reformatting process. Was it very hard?"

"Oh. Well. I was injured in that collapse in the Voltihex mine. You know, the unsafe mine? It was in the news for a bit? Anyway, the ones of us who survived got some reparations, after, so I had money for the reformat. Everyone says they mark you down on the aptitude tests for not being a traditional law enforcement frame type, but I studied hard, so I did all right. And the work's been… I mean, I like it. I wasn't ever a very good miner, begging my lord's pardon."

He gave Optimus a faintly defiant look, still tinted with that unsettling anxiety. 

"I'm glad you found something that suited you," Optimus said, letting him off the hook. He would've liked to ask more, but it didn't seem fair to stress Drill-Bit out this much just to satisfy his own curiosity. "Shall we rejoin the others?"

"Of course, my lord."

After the darkness of the tunnels, stepping into the warm sunlight outside almost felt like stepping onto another planet. Optimus stood still for a moment, letting his optics adjust, and then turned around for one last look. The mine's entrance was a pitch-black hole from out here, gaping like a wound slashed into the side of Turnox mountain. At the top of the mountain, the Altihex Spire stood reassuringly untouched by time. It'd been there long before Optimus had been forged, outlasted the war, and would probably outlast Optimus, too.

"So what did he want?" he heard Pursuit say. 

Optimus started guiltily. The guards had retreated to their little booth at the mine's entrance, and they wouldn't have any idea he could still hear them. He'd never gotten his wartime sensors downgraded, and with Cloudwing so vulnerable in his subspace, his directional mics had locked onto the guards as they would any other threat. He shouldn't be using that fact to spy on them. 

He folded himself into alt and started his engine, pulling slowly out on the road. But he couldn't bring himself to unlock the directional mics, so he could clearly hear Drill-Bit's reply:

"Eh, you know. Just the usual slag about, 'Aren't you a miner? Why aren't you in a mine?'" 

Optimus winced. He'd rounded the first corner now, far enough away to be out of sight of the guards when he guiltily pulled over and cut his engine again, just in time to hear Pursuit groan. 

"Aww, scrap. You know, everyone knows Sentinel's a bit of a Functionist, but I guess I wouldn't have expected it of Optimus Prime. You okay?"

"Yeah. He laid off when I told him I get good evals. Don't think he's gonna make any trouble for me. I hope. I mean, he couldn't, right? There's no laws against it anymore, it's not illegal to get a reformat."

"Sure," the other guard said, sounding faintly skeptical.

"But it's not gonna help if Prime gets it in his head he doesn't like me doing this job, is it," Drill-Bit said with a sigh. 

Optimus found himself rocking unhappily on his wheels. But he didn't think it'd make anything better if he went back and tried to set the record straight. He'd unsettled poor Drill-Bit enough already. 

There was a clanking sound, like one of them had patted the other on the back, and then Pursuit's voice again: "Don't know why you like this piece of scrap job so much, anyway. If I could afford a reformat, I'd do something else in a sparkbeat."

"That's cause you've never worked in a mine. At least here we get to see sunlight most of the day, and this place isn't gonna spontaneously collapse onto our head. At least until the spawn of Unicron down there decides he's had enough and brings it down."

"You really think he's collecting explosives? Boss said there's no way he could be stockpiling, the quota's too tight."

Drill-Bit snorted. "Yeah, right. That's what we always told our supervisors, too, but everyone was stock-piling for a rainy day. And the big bosses damn well know it, they just don't care. It's not like there's a lot of other tris-proton miners left. The only thing he can blow up down there is himself, a couple tunnels in a mine they couldn't operate without him anyway, and our sorry skid plates."

There was a long moment of silence. 

"You _really_ think…?" Pursuit repeated nervously. 

"Eh," Drill-Bit said. "Didn't used to think he'd actually do it. Megatron's not suicidal, and he's not stupid. He knows he'll get caught in it if he sets anything off down there. But now—who knows what he'll do for spite, with what Prime's doing."

Optimus winced again. He really shouldn't be listening to this, and yet he needed to know what they thought. If they had any inkling of what was really going on….

"You really think Prime is, you know…."

"Yeah, obviously. Come on. If this was just about interrogating Megatron, they'd send someone from spec ops, not Optimus Prime himself. And he wouldn't need to pay off the big boss to do it. Not to mention all that to-do about us staying out of audio pick-up range. Nah. Prime's getting in a bit of personal revenge while the getting is good."

Ah. Yes. He'd worried that was what they thought. The idea made his plating crawl. The guards had decided he was down there doing… Primus knew what, to Megatron, to a helpless prisoner, and they were just letting it happen, for a handful of shanix. 

He had to be grateful no one had caught on about Cloudwing, but the fact of the matter was, they _shouldn't_ be letting him into the mine, not without some sort of official authorization. 

"That's messed up, mech," Pursuit said. 

"Yeah, well, what do you think we're gonna do about it?" Drill-Bit said. "I'm lucky I got this job. If it wasn't for the fact that they needed a guy who knows something about mines…. I was fifth percentile in my aptitude tests, you know. If I'd been enforcer-framed, I'd be standing in parades with the elite guard now. As it is, they'll be happy to kick me out if there's a word of trouble."

Optimus sighed, feeling only more guilty. Drill-Bit was right, of course—there was nothing they could do to stop him, if Optimus felt like throwing his weight around. If he was honest with himself, he could get official authorization to interrogate Megatron any time if he felt like requesting it. Only if he did, Jazz would start asking questions he didn't want to answer. 

Drill-Bit sighed, a steam whistle loud enough to make Optimus wince. 

"You ought to be more grateful for that frame of yours. If you applied yourself…."

"What, so I can stand my treads off in parades? No thanks."

"Suit yourself," Drill-Bit said. "Come on, let's do a perimeter check, I want some sunlight on my plates while I still got the chance, there's supposed to be acid rain later."

Optimus hastily pulled back onto the road before they could come around the corner and spot him. He drove back towards central Kaon mostly on autopilot, navigation systems and proximity sensors handling the steering while the rest of his processor churned through everything he'd heard today. 

Megatron, for all his flaws, wasn't a liar. If he said the prisoners had been mistreated, Optimus believed him. But Megatron had been out of contact with his Decepticons for a long time now. Surely by this point the situation in the prisons wasn't anything like what Megatron remembered. 

Optimus knew conditions hadn't been ideal for the Decepticon prisoners at the end of the war. The Decepticon officers alone had filled Deuterion, the maximum security facility, to bursting. After that they'd crammed a few hundred of the most dangerous of Megatron's soldiers into Kaon's largest prison complex and relocated the rest of them, the common foot soldiers and hangers-on, to a camp outside the city. 

Of course space was tight and rations were short. But that was true for everyone. The Autobots and neutrals in Kaon still went on and off fuel rationing depending on how the mines and refineries did on any given week. 

If he was honest with himself, in those early days after the war it'd been hard to make himself care too much about the condition of the Decepticon prisoners. The Cons had dragged the war out long past when any sensible mech would've surrendered. For a while it'd felt like the violence would never end. Optimus could understand the Autobots' impulse to lock them all up and throw away the key; he'd struggled with it himself. 

But he'd expected conditions to rapidly improve as soon as everyone had the chance to cool their jets. There was a reintegration committee that was supposed to separate out the true war criminals from the common soldiers, and get everyone who could be rehabilitated back out onto the streets as quickly as possible. They should've freed up space inside the prisons and camps. 

Except that when Optimus had gone asking for Cloudwing's sake, the committee hadn't been able to name him a single Decepticon who was settled enough to take in a sparkling. He'd been too frantic at the time about Cloudwing to ask the follow-up questions he should've asked, about what in the pit was holding up the reintegration efforts if that was the result several orns after the end of the war.

Optimus took a corner a bit more quickly than was strictly wise, tires squealing angrily. Nothing else was moving as quickly as he thought it should, either. They finally had the opportunity to rebuild their society, to rebuild it the _right_ way. And instead the council just kept stalling. 

Optimus had been bashing his helm against the slow process of change for orns, getting blocked at every turn. In the beginning the senators had been vying for his attention, when they thought he was going to be nothing more than a figurehead they could decorate themselves with: a retired war hero who'd voluntarily given up the rights of the primacy when the true prime returned from captivity. 

He'd been happy enough to encourage them in that belief, at first. Sentinel was so touchy about his power, too aware that Optimus had surrendered the primacy voluntarily, and might still try to claw it back. The last thing Optimus had wanted was to set off a power struggle that might end in another civil war. He'd retired to Kaon, away from the council's seat in Iacon. But he'd been unable to sit still and watch the way things were going around him. There wasn't space or fuel enough for all the refugees, and the local official weren't even trying to be fair in the allocation of what little there was. The FDMs were still being treated as disposable, and the voting rights they'd been given were a sham. The council re-election that should've happened six orns ago was still being blocked, _"until things are more settled."_  
_  
_ Optimus had started out petitioning the councilors for a few minor things, taking advantage of their eagerness to listen to a decorated war hero. But it wasn't only small things that were needed. In the last orn before he'd found out about Cloudwing, he'd been making the trek to Iacon almost daily. By then, the councilors always had something else to do when he tried to make them listen, no matter what time he showed up. 

He couldn't be everywhere at once. He couldn't do everything. He'd let the question of what was happening to the Decepticon prisoners slip from his attention. 

He'd known Sentinel hated the Cons. He'd been taken prisoner early in the war. Megatron had had plenty of interrogators who enjoyed their jobs a little too much, and Sentinel represented everything the Decepticons hated. He'd been tortured long past the point where he had any intel left to divulge. 

Optimus should've noticed something was up when Sentinel had personally involved himself with the Decepticon reintegration committee. But Sentinel was the prime. If a _prime_ didn't know better than to let his personal feelings interfere with his duty to his people…

…like Optimus himself had done, when he'd handed the power of the primacy back to Sentinel? Guilt churned his tanks. Optimus careened around a bend in the road, scraping his tires painfully against the asphalt. 

He'd been sick to his struts of the endless war. He'd been handed a lot of power he'd never wanted, power he'd barely known what to do with, and he'd been so very glad when he could finally hand it back. But Megatron was right. It'd been too much power to hand away so easily. At the very least he should've made sure Sentinel was still able to do his job, to be objective, after everything that had happened to him in the war. And he should've made sure to keep an eye on what happened to the Decepticons. 

Well, he'd make sure now. 

Megatron had been locked up for several orns. His intel was hopelessly out of date. Conditions in the prisons had had plenty of time to improve. 

Cloudwing had finally gone into recharge in his subspace pocket. The sleeping weight of him felt much heavier than it should be. Optimus's sensors kept focusing in on him, and his transformation manager had already shifted some armor plating around to put a few more protective layers over his pocket. Another plate of armor slid into place as Optimus turned onto the road that led out of Iacon towards Kaliax Penitentiary. 

Maybe he ought to drop the sparkling off somewhere first—

But no. Things would be fine. And if they weren't….

If they weren't, he was going to cross that bridge when he came to it.


	2. The Prison

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So much for my good intention of weekly updates. /o\ Well, there's a plague on.

Optimus didn't stop to call ahead. The guard at the gate to Kaliax prison took a startled step back when Optimus braked in front of his booth, more sharply than was really polite, and transformed in the same motion.

"My lord Prime! I'm so sorry, I wasn't informed we were expecting you—"

"You weren't. This is a surprise inspection. Please ask the warden to join us," Optimus said. His voice came out hard and flat. It wasn't how he'd usually talk to someone this far down the command chain. He didn't like throwing his weight around, but he'd seen Sentinel do it often enough to be able to nail the tone of voice: _I'm perfectly aware that I'm disrupting your work, I don't care in the least, and I know you won't dare to say anything about it._

It took all his self-control to make himself stand still for the seven kliks it took for the warden to come out. His feet wanted to tap, and the guns in his subspace were itching to come out. There wasn't much this one guard could do to stop him if he simply pushed his way past, but he couldn't just go and storm the prison. Even if his entire frame felt like a steam kettle about to explode with the need to _move_ , to _do something._

The warden came out looked harried, the insignia magnetized to his chest plates crooked and his polish uneven in spots where he'd refreshed it in a hurry. The three guards following him hardly looked any less nervous.

"My lord Prime! If we'd known you were coming—"

"Then it wouldn't be a surprise inspection, now would it," Optimus said, forcing a smile that felt like it might crack his faceplates. "It's a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Warden—?"

"Warden Blastshield. This is Senior Guard Lockjaw."

"Warden Blastshield. I'm sorry to interrupt your day. I'm just here to have a quick look around, make sure the security precautions are up to snuff, and then I'll be off again," Optimus said. 

He looked Blastshield up and down. Expensive polish, despite the hasty application. Shiny healthy plating, all his biolights glowing brightly. This wasn't a mech who'd been affected by the recent fuel shortages. But then, warden to Kaon's second-biggest prison compound was a well-paid job. He wouldn't _have_ to be skimming off the top to keep himself well-supplied. It wasn't fair to judge him on some vague feeling of antipathy that Optimus couldn't have justified if called on it. There was just something about the mech that rubbed him the wrong way. 

_The prisoners were your responsibility. Your duty. Let me see that you've lived up to it. Let me prove Megatron wrong._

Optimus made himself keep smiling. "I'd hate to keep you from your work. I'm sure one of your guards can show me around—"

"Oh, no, my lord Prime, of course I will personally—"

Optimus didn't let himself look at the probability calculations that were lining up just below conscious processing. Blastshield was too nervous, and not just in the way of a mech who'd had a well-connected visitor dropped in his lap with no warning. There was something here he didn't want Optimus to see. 

He reached for the tone he thought Sentinel would've used. "One of your guards will escort me. All I need is fifteen kliks, and then I'll be able to go home and assure the people of Kaon that they're safe."

Blastshield relaxed fractionally. Insufficient security precautions weren't the problem he was trying to hide. 

"If you insist, my lord. Guard Lockjaw will show you around—"

"Thank you," Optimus said. He started walking, leaving Lockjaw scrambling to catch up. Lockjaw was a tall bot in the classic black-and-white enforcer paint job. He looked as tense as Blastshield had, but for different reasons: he kept throwing Optimus awed glances. It made Optimus's plating crawl, the way it always did when mechs looked at him like he was some sort of mythical being. He'd ended up with the Matrix almost by accident, and had no choice but to do his best to live up to the responsibility. There were plenty of other mechs who'd have done the same in his place.

Lockjaw led him into a locker room. The heavy metal gate clanged shut behind them. "This is where we usually ask visitors to disarm," he said, throwing Optimus another anxious sideways glance. 

"A very sensible precaution," Optimus said, completely ignoring the unsubtle hint. He didn't think Lockjaw would actually have the nerve to ask a Prime to give up his weapons. 

As it turned out, he was right. Lockjaw just stood there, looking like he was fighting the urge to wring his hands.

"Well?" Optimus said, channeling Sentinel again, impatient and utterly impervious to anyone else's discomfort. 

"Of course," Lockjaw muttered unhappily. 

The inner grate unlocked with a clang. 

Lockjaw kept giving him nervous glances as he led Optimus to the cell block. Optimus took his time walking down the row of cells, tension rising inside him. The accommodations weren't great, but it wasn't anywhere near as bad as Megatron had implied. The cells were compact, the berths narrow, but every cell had a small window of its own. Afternoon sunlight filtered through in slanted stripes. The prisoners were all a bit thin and unhappy-looking, but they weren't starved or dented. 

Considering the overall state of the rebuilding efforts, the fuel shortages, and the public sentiment towards Decepticons, it was about as good as Optimus could've been hoping to find. 

And everything about it was a lie. 

The whole block was a facade, and not even a very convincing one. It was probably intended for exactly this sort of occasion: dignitaries or journalists coming to have a look around. 

The prisoners in those cells had obviously been carefully selected, and whoever had done the selecting hadn't even cared enough to make them look like a representative sample of the Decepticon army. 

There were several mechs who looked painfully young, practically sparklings still, obviously in their first adult frames: young enough that the guards might've simply taken pity on them.

There were a few mechs with expensive frame modifications or the distinctive helm vents a lot of mechs from noble families had. Mechs who'd have had enough shanix tucked away to bribe their way into a better cell. 

And then there were several Seekers and a few racer frames, all of them sleek and beautiful, their plating polished to a lurid mirror shine that left little doubt about what they'd had to offer the guards to end up in these relatively cushy cells. 

Seekers were always terrible prisoners. Most of them were busy pacing up and down in that twitchy way Optimus had seen from captive fliers before, watching him from optics narrowed with hate. Others were plastered to their windows with their hands clenched around the bars, or curled in on themselves on their berths, staring apathetically at the wall. The racers looked a little better overall, but it was still striking how beaten down and unhappy they seemed despite their shiny plating.

There wasn't a single heavy warframe. No miners, no tank alts, no construction vehicles. 

"Are you satisfied, my lord?" Lockjaw asked, when he led them out the other side of the cellblock. There was a heavy metal door on one side of the hallway. Lockjaw was steering him past it conspicuously quickly. 

"Yes," Optimus said. It was hard to speak. More and more of his processor was tying itself up with a process Optimus didn't quite want to look at. "I've seen what I needed to see."

There was what looked like a rec room for the guards at the end of the corridor, a few chairs surrounding a rickety table, a large cupboard for cleaning supplies. The room was empty. Optimus walked inside without waiting for an invitation. Lockjaw followed him in, watching him nervously. Optimus wasn't really sure what was showing on his face; most of his attention was on the scan he was running. 

"I could call the warden—"

"That won't be necessary," Optimus said. His scan had finished. There weren't any hidden cameras in the room. 

Lockjaw jumped when Optimus set a hand on his shoulder, but he didn't pull away—of course he didn't pull away. Optimus was the Prime. Lockjaw didn't see it coming when Optimus used that hand on his shoulder to hold him in place and punched two fingers of his other hand straight through to the power relay below his bumper. 

Lockjaw's optics went wide. His mouth opened, but the only sound that came out was a faint whistle of steam. His optics winked out as his system crashed into emergency stasis mode. 

Optimus caught him with one arm and dragged him over to the supply closet, shoving brooms and buckets aside and lowering him down to sag limply against the wall. It wasn't a deadly injury, but there was no safe way to boot back up with damage to a thoracic power relay. Unless Lockjaw had the kind of combat module that'd let him route around that kind of damage, he wasn't waking up without a medic's help. And he didn't have that option, or he'd be up and swinging already. 

It still didn't give him a lot of time. The warden would be expecting Lockjaw to report back fairly soon, not to mention the risk of someone stumbling over him here.

Optimus hurried back to that metal door. It was locked and barred, but it was clearly barred against the _other_ side. From this side, it was easy enough to force it open. 

The smell hit him the instant the door opened. It was a thick battlefield stench, charred circuits and burned rubber, old energon and the acrid scent of spilled waste fluid. On the other side of the door, a set of stairs led down into the dark. 

Optimus grimly regulated his chemo receptors down, started an encrypted recording directly to his most heavily shielded memory unit, and started walking down the stairs. 

It was worse than he'd imagined. One-way mirrors showed him cells crusted with filth. Mechs were crammed three and four apiece into spaces that would've been claustrophobic even for a single occupant. All the furniture was built to Autobot dimensions; not a single one of the warframes had a berth large enough to stretch out on. 

Many of them were chained to the wall, if they didn't have their feet hobbled or neural clamps on the back of their necks. All the Decepticons showed signs of fuel starvation: optics dim, running lights off, their plating so thin it was starting to show cracks. 

More than a few were tied up in painful-looking stress positions, arms above their heads or fastened too tightly behind their backs. The rest were curled up on their inadequate berths, conserving what energy they could, staring dully at the walls of their cells. 

The cells themselves were lit up in merciless neon light, but the corridor was dark. Optimus crept along as quietly as he could. His convoy frame wasn't what anyone would've called stealthy, but he still had his wartime routines for near-silent movement.

One of the cells held two or three dozen tiny FDMs: laser pointers and rifle scopes, a holo recorder, the sort of alts the Council had ordered constructed after the beginning of the war, grasping for any small advantage: tin-can plating and flimsy wiring, cheap to fuel, impossible to repair. The Council had designed them to be disposable. No wonder most of them had run away to the Decepticon side the moment they had the chance. 

They were huddled together on a single berth, practically stacked on top of one another even though there was another berth on the other side of the room which held only—oh. Optimus paused, sickened, and then made himself move on, turning away from the two tiny, greyed-out frames the guards hadn't bothered to remove. 

He followed the corridor around a bend. There was light streaming in from the other side, and he could hear the sounds of steps. Optimus peeked around the corner as quietly as he could, just in time to see a guard drag a Decepticon out of his cell by his chained arms. The mech wasn't trying to fight, but he _was_ dragging his feet, maybe scared, or maybe just too weak to move more quickly. 

Either way, he wasn't going fast enough for the guard, who snarled, "Get a move on, will you? Medic wants to see you again."

The Con cringed back. The guard yanked him forwards in frustration. He pulled out a shock stick and struck the Decepticon over the shoulders with it twice, hard enough to dent, and then jammed the prod into an armor seam and held it there, crackling, while the Decepticon crumpled to the floor, gasping in pain. 

Around Optimus the world narrowed to the clarity of a battlefield. His HUD had already switched to a tactical overview, scanners highlighting vulnerable areas on the guard's armor, an assessment scrolling down—high maximum power output, but inferior armor, and slow. Too slow to turn in time at the sound of Optimus's steps pounding down the corridor towards him. 

The cheap plasteel plating over the guard's chest gave like tinfoil when Optimus punched his fingers through, grabbed a bundle of wires, and yanked. The guard collapsed to the floor, rag-doll limp. A moment later his optics dimmed as his system rebooted to start the long slow process of routing around the damage to his senso-motory wiring. He'd be out for a good long while. Optimus stood, venting hard.

The actual exertion had been minimal. He still felt as if he was overheating. 

The Con had gone cringing away from him on instinct, but now he was uncurling slightly from his protective crouch, staring up at him with his optics refocusing several times, face full of disbelief. 

"Optimus Prime?"

"Shh," Optimus said sharply. 

The mech flinched, then straightened his shoulders, visibly bracing himself. 

"It's all right. You're safe now." That wasn't actually a thing he could promise; he regretted the words as soon as he said them. But the Con didn't believe him anyway. He pressed himself back against the door of his cell, chained arms held defensively in front of himself.

"It's all right," Optimus repeated. He stretched out his hand. "What's your name?"

The Con glared at him suspiciously, but after a moment he took Optimus's hand and let Optimus help him to his feet. "I'm Stinger." 

Optimus could see where he'd gotten the name. He had a long, powerful tail arching up over his head. The blade that must've been at the end of his tail had been removed. The weld lines were too straight for it to have been a battle injury. A medic had done this: a crude, sloppy job, the welding scars not even halfway healed, a rust infection eating away at the wound. Primus, no wonder Stinger had dragged his feet on going to the infirmary again. No wonder he was scared.

But he didn't have time to be reassuring. There were three cameras pointed at this part of the hallway. Not a single one of them had an active recording light. The guard probably hadn't wanted to get caught on tape torturing a prisoner. But they might be turned back on at any moment. He needed to do something about the guard's unconscious frame.

"Help me put him…" He looked around. There was nothing but the corridor and the cells. Stinger's was smaller than most, but at least didn't have anyone else in it. 

"We'll put him under your berth," he decided.

Stinger made a horrified noise. "They'll kill me if they find him there!"

"They won't have a chance. I'm getting you out of here."

Stinger stared at him in disbelief. 

Optimus didn't wait around for any objections. He grabbed the guard by the chest plates and stuffed him under the narrow berth. 

"Why are you _doing_ this?" Stinger asked. His tail lashed in agitation, darting up above his head as if readying for a strike, and then curling back down to wrap around his leg. "You're Optimus Prime. I _know_ you! What are you doing here?"

Primus, that was the question right there, wasn't it. "This isn't right," Optimus said. "I'm taking you to Megatron."

Stinger jerked. "Lord Megatron's alive? He sent you?" He nodded, and said, in a more quiet tone, as if to himself. "Yes. If anyone could do it…."

His optics lit with a painfully bright hope. Optimus didn't really want to disillusion him. If letting this mech think Megatron had sent him got him to cooperate right now….

"I'll take you to him," he repeated, not quite dodging the question. He gripped Stinger by the shoulder. "Wait until I'm out of the corridor. And then I want you to go down the cells and wake everyone up. No noise, no suspicious behavior, but I need them all ready to go. I'm getting you all out of here."

Maybe this was a mistake. If the Decepticons started attracting attention to themselves before he was ready to go, he was going to have a problem. But he didn't have time to second-guess himself right now. 

He was painfully aware of an internal timer ticking down: with every moment that passed, the chance of being discovered grew. Optimus went back down the corridor at a flat-out sprint and dashed up the stairs. The hallway was still empty, and there was no sign of alarms; he'd made it in time. Optimus manually throttled all his fans. It made him feel like he was suffocating, and a temperature warning lit up in the corner of his HUD, but at least it stopped him from looking like he'd just been running.

He walked down the corridor until he met a guard coming the other way, who startled badly when he saw him. Optimus didn't give him time to say anything. "I want to speak to the warden and the other guards. You'll call a full assembly."

"But—" the guard started. 

"Did Lockjaw not comm you?" Optimus snapped. 

"Um—My lord, where's—"

"Are your audials malfunctioning? Was there anything unclear about my orders? Call for full assembly. _Now_ ," Optimus barked. 

He barely knew what he was saying. His frame felt like it didn't belong to him anymore, like trying to pilot an exosuit from behind a holo screen. All he knew was that he couldn't give the guard any time to think. He really didn't want to have to start answering questions right now, especially not on the topic of where Lockjaw had gone. 

"Immediately, my lord Prime," the guard stammered, clearly deciding that this could be someone else's mess to sort out. He opened the comm link. A moment later, Optimus heard the call for a full assembly going out over the prison's intercom system. 

"They'll come to the south tower control room—if that's acceptable, my lord?"

"You'll escort me there," Optimus said. He started walking, forcing the guard to catch up. His hands kept wanting to ball into fists; it was an effort to keep them loose by his sides. 

Mechs were already converging on the control room when they got there, although the concerned chatter died down when they spotted him: not an emergency, then, just a functionary interrupting everyone's business. 

Optimus let himself be shown around the control room while the guards assembled. He kept smiling, even though his face hurt and his battlemask wanted to slam shut. Rage boiled sickeningly through his lines. Half the security monitors were out, and the others showed the cell block he'd already been allowed to visit. Several cells showed up twice, like they'd spliced the footage to make the lack of active monitors a little less obvious. 

Optimus flat-out aborted ninety percent of his emotional subroutines, all of which were supremely unhelpful at the moment. He couldn't afford to lose it now. It had the unpleasant effect of making the whole situation feel like some sort of nauseating holo sim, flat and far away. There was a risk assessment routine screaming at him that kept restarting itself every time he dumped it. Optimus ignored it.

The warden hurried in, looking ready to bust a cannon. "My lord Prime! Where did Lockjaw—"

"I want to address the guards," Optimus said, talking over him. His combat routines fought to come online, and he kept having to suppress them. Lots of mechs were capable of detecting the altered power flow of a combat-ready state, and prison guards would certainly notice. He felt as if he were standing at a precipice, everything unraveling around him. 

"Of course, my lord. But—"

"This is the central control station?" Optimus asked, nodding towards the console behind him. 

"Yes. It controls the comm systems and the locking mechanisms," Blastshield said, clearly resigning himself to the fact that Optimus wasn't going to answer his questions. "If you'd like a demonstration—"

"Maybe later. Is that everyone?" Optimus asked, looking over the gathered mechs. 

"Everyone who can be spared from their stations, yes."

Optimus raised his voice. "Close that door! Hello, everyone. If I could have everyone's attention for a moment."

Someone closed the door to the hallway. Silence descended. Optimus looked over the gathered mechs. He still felt as if he were floating outside his own body. Someone must've warned the guards he might want to speak to them before he left. Many of them looked like they'd applied a hasty layer of polish. All of them were obviously well-fueled. It wasn't a mystery where the fuel that'd been allotted for the starving prisoners in the cells had gone. 

They looked at him expectantly, waiting for the usual perfunctory pat on the back you got from a visiting dignitary: carry on, mechs, doing fine, duty to Cybertron, etc. Some of them were smiling, pleased; the war-hero Prime had bothered to visit them.

Optimus thought of the two tiny, greyed-out frames no one had bothered to remove from an overcrowded cell, and fought down the urge to scream. They'd be confused at his anger, probably. Those two dead mechs were only disposables, after all, small cheap frames not meant to last, not meant to be repaired; they broke down all the time. 

A lot of the guards were in standard enforcer frames, so similar to Prowl they might've been forged together. Optimus felt his spark clench, sickened, looking at those half-familiar black-and-white faces, so familiar he instinctively wanted to like them, to trust them. They weren't monsters; they were only mechs doing a job, a hard, unrewarding job, working for people who didn't care whether they did it well, and they'd let it make them hard and careless in turn. They'd managed to convince themselves that their prisoners weren't people like them, and as easily as that, they'd stopped caring. They'd looked at those little frames, and they hadn't seen anything worth being careful of. They hadn't called a medic, not even to follow procedures. They'd left two corpses in a crowded cell. This was what war turned people into. And if he freed the Decepticons, there'd be war all over again. 

But he couldn't leave them here. He couldn't leave them to this. 

His combat processor had finished running the tactical simulations, and offered several options. Optimus made himself look at the guards' unsuspecting faces as he started a subroutine running. For a moment, his visual field fuzzed out with the power drain as magnetic coils began to charge. 

In his subspace, Cloudwing started to stir, close enough to feel the roiling emotions in his EM field no matter how hard Optimus fought to keep from projecting any of it.   
_  
Stay quiet just a little bit longer,_ Optimus thought at him, pleadingly. 

In front of him, the guards were getting restless. Time to stop stalling. 

"When the Decepticons were given into your care, you all accepted a heavy responsibility," Optimus started. 

All their attention was on him. Optimus struggled to focus. Even though he'd never downgraded his wartime shielding, his powerflow was going to be at least somewhat visible to every mech who had the right sensors. He had to be careful not to shift too much power around too quickly. 

"You were tasked with keeping Kaon safe from the Decepticons. You've done that," Optimus said. 

More mechs were smiling now. The rest of them looked bored. They'd heard this type of speech before, at just about every Victory Day celebration. Optimus struggled to keep his expression calm. He'd given this kind of speech before, too. He knew how it went. 

His magnetic coils were starting to ache. He nudged his shielding up a bit higher to cover the resonance fluctuations.

"But you had another task," Optimus said, letting a fraction of his real feelings creep into his voice. A few of the guards shifted nervously, throwing him worried looks. The rest of them didn't seem to have caught on to the change in his tone yet, if they'd been listening at all. "You were tasked with keeping the Decepticons safe. You haven't done that."

The temperature alert at the corner of his vision was shading into the red. His reactor was running at almost full power now and throwing off a lot of heat, and Optimus couldn't run his fans any higher without attracting attention. But the coils were almost finished charging. A timer started counting down on his HUD. 

_Ten nanokliks._

"You had a duty! These mechs may have been the enemy, but they're your prisoners. Your responsibility. Your fellow Cybertronians." 

His voice was slipping from his control. Every mech in the room was paying attention now. No one was smiling anymore. 

"You've been treating them like drones—worse than drones—did you think there weren't going to be consequences?"

_Five nanokliks._

"My lord Prime—" Blastshield started. Optimus ignored him. 

"Maybe some of you were only obeying orders. They were corrupt orders, and you ought to have known better than to follow them. There were choices you could've made. Now, I'm making a choice."

He had to raise his voice for the last few words, talking over an increasingly loud chorus of worried and resentful mutters. 

_Ready. Activate?_

Everyone was supposed to keep EM shielding engaged all the time for safety reasons. In reality hardly anyone did, now that the war was over. It sucked up enormous amounts of power, and they'd been going on and off fuel rationing. The guards would've felt safe, in the stronghold of their own workplace, on a regular workday, listening to what they'd expected to be a boring speech by a political figurehead; why waste the power on shielding?

If he'd given them time to think, they might have remembered to engage it once the tone of his voice changed. But they hadn't expected the turn his speech had taken. They certainly didn't expect what he did next. 

Optimus turned up his own shielding to full power, and fired off the EM blast. 

The power surge almost threw him off his feet. Half a dozen circuit breakers burned out with a blinding crackle of pain. 

The guards went down in a clattering heap.

Optimus caught himself against a console and looked around the room. Seventeen pairs of horrified optics looked back at him. The EM blast would keep them from moving until self-repair managed to patch their peripheral systems, but processing and core-reactive circuitry was shielded at the hardware level; they were fully conscious inside their paralyzed frames. 

Optimus made himself keep moving. There'd be time later to figure out the knotted mess his emotional circuitry had turned itself into. Right now he needed to hurry. He was pretty sure he hadn't set off any alarms yet, but there were still a few guards out there. 

He staggered as he took the first step, wincing; he might've cracked a gasket from overheating his engine like that. But there wasn't any time to deal with that right now, either. He set his fans to run full-blast, sucking in a steady stream of wonderfully cold air, and shunted all the damage warnings aside to deal with later. 

Blastshield managed a horrified moaning sound as Optimus picked him up and dragged him over to the control console. Optimus growled.

"You shouldn't have allowed this. They were your responsibility," he said, pressing Blastshield's hand against the reader. The console unlocked for the warden's EM frequency. Thankfully the interface was fairly intuitive; Optimus managed to find the emergency release that would open all doors in the lower cell block of the prison complex. 

Blastshield made another sound as the faint clanking of opening doors echoed down the corridor. Optimus's rage was already starting to drain away in the face of the terror on Blastshield's face, leaving only exhausted resignation. Primus, how he hated all this. There was supposed to be an _end_ to the violence. Now there were going to be more mechs hurt. More deaths. He'd have to block the door when he left, make sure the Decepticons didn't get the chance to take revenge on their guards. 

He popped out a lasercutter and stabbed it into the comm console, setting off a shower of sparks. Hopefully that would at least stop the guards from using the prison's uplink to contact Kaon. There'd be backup comm equipment somewhere, but every nanoklik of time he could buy them helped. 

The first of the guards had started twitching, but no one was actually moving yet by the time he left the control room. Optimus welded the door shut behind himself with a few careful laser blasts. It wouldn't hold them for long, and it wouldn't hold up if he couldn't stop the Decepticons from trying to get at the guards, either. He'd just have to find a way to get them out of the prison as quickly as possible. 

Cloudwing squirmed unhappily in his subspace pocket. "I know. I'm sorry," Optimus said, apologetically patting the triple layer of armor that covered the pocket. "There wasn't any other way." 

He could admit it to himself now, he supposed: a part of him had already known that if things were as bad as Megatron had said, there'd be no turning back. That's why he'd brought the sparkling into a situation that he'd known perfectly well might end in combat: he'd known that if he left Cloudwing with an Autobot friend, there might be no way to go back for him. 

He'd known it as soon as Megatron had told him. He'd wanted Megatron to be lying; but deep down, he'd known what he'd find before he'd even entered the prison. He'd only been clinging to some small desperate hope. None of this was what he wanted to happen. 

Time to face the truth of what he'd done.

* * *

Optimus pounded back down the corridor to the lower cell block. All the cells doors hung wide open. The Decepticons were crowded into the corridor. Optimus burst in on what looked like an argument about five nanokliks away from turning into a fight. 

Stinger was standing alone, half-blocking the doorway, facing off against another Decepticon. He had his tail held high above his head, blustering. 

"We have to wait! He'll be coming back for us—You'll spoil the entire plan!" he yelled, his voice cracking with desperation. The mech he was facing was almost twice Stinger's size, with fists like pile drivers and huge slabs of corrugated durasteel forming a carapace around her, and she had the massed force of the Decepticons behind her. 

There was a sudden swell of raised voices as Optimus came into sight. Stinger collapsed in on himself in visible relief. He made a sweeping gesture from Optimus to the mech he was talking to. "I told you, Boxcar! See? It _is_ Optimus Prime! He'll take us to Megatron." 

"Fine, so you haven't dropped _all_ your gears. That doesn't explain why you think we ought to trust an Autobot—especially _that_ Autobot," the mech—Boxcar—said. "I say we slag him and take our chances on our own."

Optimus didn't think it was a good idea to wait for them to argue it out on their own. He ran some extra power to his speakers. "Decepticons!" he roared. Every single one of them was looking at him now. Quite a few of them had to look down, some of them quite far. But he couldn't afford to let that intimidate him right now. "Megatron and I have entered an alliance." Which was stretching the truth to the absolute breaking point, but they could get into those details once he'd actually gotten them to Megatron. 

"He's waiting for us at the tris-proton mine in Kaon's Vortex sector. We'll need to get there quickly, without attracting attention. Most of the guards are incapacitated for now, but I don't expect we'll have more than half a joor before backup arrives."

"Why should we trust you? We know who you are, Optimus Prime! We know what you've done!" Boxcar called out. The Cons muttered in agreement, shifting restlessly. For a moment, everything teetered on the edge of violence. 

Cloudwing stirred in his hidden compartment. Optimus transformed the plates aside and set the sparkling on his shoulder, letting all of them get a good look at his Autobot blue optics and the design of his frame, the shape of his helm and wings so much like Megatron's own. 

"Megatron chose to trust me with his heir," he said. 

A gasp went through the crowd of gathered Decepticons.

Optimus could see them swallowing the lie he'd only implied: that Cloudwing was his, and Megatron the sire. His spark roiled queasily. He had no idea how Megatron was going to take this little improvisation. But for now, all that mattered was getting the Decepticons safely to the mine. After that, keeping them under control could be Megatron's problem. 

Cloudwing waved his little antennae around, scanning the gathered crowd with great interest. He made a protesting sound when Optimus wrestled him gently back into the hidden compartment. 

"If Lord Megatron chose to trust him, can't we at least agree to trust him enough to get us out of here?" Stinger asked. 

"How do you know he's not lying? That sparkling could be anyone's," Boxcar snapped at him. 

A few mechs around her nodded. 

"I still say we slag him!" one of the Decepticons roared. He was a warframe almost as big as Boxcar, all four of his red optics glowing with hate. 

"We don't have any time to waste! You think you'll get out of here quicker if you stop to fight me first?" Optimus said. 

"He's right. There's no point standing here arguing until the 'bots show up," Stinger said. "We all know Megatron's in the Vortex mine. You've heard the guards talking about that before. Let's go there. Anything else we can discuss once we're there."

"He's got a point," Boxcar said. 

The big warframe turned on her with a roar. She caught his arm in one of her enormous fists, giving him a shake that lifted him clear off the ground. "Knock it off, Charger. He's right, there's no point fighting it out in here. If he's lying, there'll be time to slag him later."

"Let's get going then. Get ready to roll out," Optimus said. There was a long moment of hesitation. The Decepticons all looked at each other, instinctively balking at taking his orders.

And then Stinger roared "You heard him! Decepticons! Rise up!" and suddenly they were falling into line behind Optimus, two abreast with their shoulders touching in the narrow corridor, pounding steps in perfect sync. He led them up the stairs into the other cellblock, the showroom one. The mechs there were coming up to their cell doors, gasps and calls of surprise running down the line of cells as the Decepticons came into sight. 

"Get those doors open," Optimus ordered. 

"Really? We're taking the shareware?" Charger muttered from somewhere behind him. There was a dull thump, and then a hiss of pain. By the time Optimus turned around, Boxcar was already busy ripping doors open, locks and hinges crumpling under the pounding blows of her fists, and Charger had retreated from her with his arms crossed mulishly in front of his chest. Other Decepticons were joining in to help rip the cell doors apart. 

There'd been no time to warn any of the Decepticons in this part of the prison about what was going to happen, but they didn't exactly wait around for an explanation, either. The whole group of them spilled out into the prison yard in a chaotic pile, some of the fliers immediately flipping into alt for take-off. 

"Can you get them to form a convoy?" Optimus asked Stinger. 

"I can try?" he said, tail twitching nervously, but his voice came out loud and confident when he engaged his speakers. "Form up, everyone! Armored vehicles up front! If you don't have a mobile alt, team up with someone who has transport capacity! Flyers, stick with the convoy! Come on, people, you know how this goes!"

He turned to Optimus and added, in an undertone, "If that's okay? That's how Megatron always had us form up when we were moving as a group." 

"Carry on," Optimus said, bemused. When he was taking command, Stinger looked like a completely different mech from the one who'd cowered against his cell door in terror. 

There was a great clattering sound as everyone who could transformed into alt at once. They formed up with amazing speed, Stinger chivvying them along. There were quite a few mechs too injured or weak to transform, and others with transformation locks on, but without Optimus even having to say anything, they got pulled into cargo compartments and onto truck beds. Boxcar transformed into a startlingly huge transport alt and flipped her doors open to gather up a group of mechs, including the whole bunch of tiny FDMs. 

Optimus rolled up to the front of the convoy, passing by the long line of tanks and armored vehicles. The Seekers had formed up into formation in the air above them and were flying a holding pattern with terrifying precision. The sight of the whole massed force made his fuel run cold. Optimus flat-out dumped his emotional subroutines out of his processor queue again, ignoring the stab of pain at the back of his helm and the growing list of errors. He didn't have time to deal with his emotions now. He'd set the Decepticons free. There wasn't any going back now. He could only try to hang on to the steering wheel for as long as he could. 

He pushed power to his speakers again. "Decepticons, follow me!" 

Amazingly enough, they did.

* * *

They crashed through Kaon just ahead of the Autobot response. They'd barely passed the perimeter of the city when alarms started wailing on the public frequencies, but the Autobots obviously hadn't had time to scramble a coordinated response. They'd almost reached the mine by the time they hit the first pockets of resistance: scattered groups of city guards that drew back with looks of startled horror on their faces at the size of the Decepticon force. 

"Hold your position! Don't engage!" Optimus roared to the Decepticons, sick to his spark with the knowledge that he had no real authority over these mechs. There wasn't any way to stop the Cons if they decided to attack the Autobot guards, who were obviously unprepared and outclassed. The prisoners had all had their weapons removed or disabled, but many of them were large enough to do plenty of damage even unarmed.

But Stinger and surprisingly enough also Boxcar were already echoing his commands down the line. Shouts of "Hold position!" went up all along the convoy. Miraculously, no one moved to attack. Even when a small group of guards did manage to organize themselves enough to cut off the intersection in front of them, no one stopped to engage. They smashed through the improvised barricade, barely slowing down. Scattered bursts of badly-coordinated blaster fire glanced off the Decepticons' armor with little effect. 

The first drops of acid rain started to fall as they reached Vortex quarter, the slum that had cropped up around the outskirts of the mine. Optimus cast a concerned glance back at the convoy, but even with their plating corroded from their time in prison, most of them were heavily armored enough to shake off the stinging drops with little damage. Sometimes a mech would flinch when a drop hit a wound or an unprotected seam, but they held their place in line with iron discipline when he wouldn't have blamed them for swerving. 

There was another group of guards in front of the mine. They'd clearly had some little bit of warning, enough to put up a few roadblocks but not enough to bring in any sort of heavy weaponry or put up a really solid barricade.

"Take them alive! We're going to need hostages!" Optimus shouted, trying for the same authoritative tone that had already worked once. All he could do was to fake a confidence he didn't feel in the slightest and hope that the magic would work one more time. They'd almost made it to the mine with no casualties; couldn't his luck hold out just a little bit longer?

And it did, more or less. Optimus was barely part of the actual fight. He got pushed off to the side almost immediately, a wall of Decepticons in between him and the guards. By the time he'd managed to push through to the front, the fighting was all but over. The guards were down on the ground, bruised and dented but alive. 

Mostly alive. One guard lay shattered beside the mine's door, a puddle of energon spreading underneath him. The color was already leeching out of his frame as his reactor sputtered out and his nanites faded along with their power source. 

Optimus paused beside the body. It wasn't one of the guards he knew, he saw, and then felt sickened at his own feeling of relief. This mech had died for the choices Optimus had made.

"We got nine of them alive," Stinger said, sidling up to him somewhat hesitantly. "Two managed to escape and there was one casualty. I'm sorry." 

Optimus blinked at him, surprised. He'd not really expected the Decepticons to follow his orders at all, never mind to apologize for not following them well enough. But there wasn't time now to think about what this meant. They needed to keep moving. 

The Decepticons were already forming up again, if raggedly; a bunch of them were passing around rags and neutralizer they'd looted from the guard booth, wiping drops of acid rain from their frames. 

"Bar the entrance to the mine and post some guards. The rest of you, follow me," he called to the group at large.

* * *

In their alt modes, the Decepticons had seemed like a terrifyingly enormous force. The illusion of might dissolved as soon as they started transforming at the entrance to the mine. Up close and in their root forms they were a sorry sight, plating cracked and rust around their untreated wounds. The signs of starvation and maltreatment were only too obvious. Many of them had been pushed to their limits by the drive, clinging to each other just to stay on their feet. Few Decepticons had alt modes designed for speed, and Optimus had set a punishing pace. He had to slow down to let them keep up as he led them down the familiar tunnels. 

A force of heavy frames this size wasn't exactly inconspicuous, so Optimus wasn't surprised Megatron realized that something was going on before they even reached him. They were halfway down the tunnel to his cell when Optimus heard the first resounding clang, and saw the cell door shudder on its hinges. Megatron stepped out of his cell with the door swinging crookedly open behind him. His broad shoulders almost filled the tunnel; a cloud of dust settled slowly around his feet. He looked at Optimus and the Decepticons behind him, and the hard line of his mouth turned slowly into a smile. 

"Decepticons! At attention!" he roared. 

They clattered to a halt in orderly rows. Megatron looked up and down their ranks, taking in the dents and blemishes, the untreated rusting wounds. His mouth pinched. 

"Cloudwing?" he asked tersely.

"He's all right." Optimus pulled him from his subspace compartment, where he'd been squirming unhappily for the entire drive. Cloudwing immediately flailed his way onto Megatron's outstretched hand and clung to him, beeping angrily. 

Optimus drew in air, trying to cool his overheated frame. "You were right. I went to the prison, just to see—" His vocalizer clicked with a hard reset. "I couldn't leave them there." He pulled one of his blasters out of subspace and held it out, grip first. "I didn't know where else to take them."

Megatron took the blaster. "I suppose it was too much to hope for that you'd have any sort of plan. How many of them are there, then?"

"Um." Optimus hadn't really _counted_ them, as such. He should have, of course. Megatron gave him the sort of look you'd give a cleaning drone that'd dragged the rusting carcass of a glitch mouse into your living room, which wasn't really fair—he hadn't had _time_ to plan any of this. Of the two of them, he wasn't the one who'd ever wanted to command an army.

"There's 278 of us, sir," Stinger said, edging hesitantly closer, only to freeze in place when Megatron turned his glowing red optics on him. "One shuttle, thirteen Seekers, twenty-five tankformers—uh, should I—keep going?" Stinger paused, giving Megatron an uncertain look.

"Go on," Megatron said. 

The full list went on for a while. Megatron listened silently. Stinger was visibly uneasily with the attention, his tail swishing nervously, but he didn't falter.

"You're sure of the numbers?" Megatron asked, once Stinger had finished.

"Yes, sir. I kept count while we were forming the convoy." He pulled his tail against his back in an anxious curl as Megatron took a step towards him. 

"What's your name, soldier?" 

"It's Stinger, sir." 

"Congratulations, Lieutenant Stinger," Megatron said. Stinger's optics spun up wide in shock, but Megatron didn't give him any time to react. "Go find out if there's anyone here who has experience in trigonium mining, and get them started on refining fuel for us as quickly as possible. I'll send you a map of where the best veins in the mine are. Get the rest of the mechs formed up into ten cohorts. I want at least one heavy warframe, one construction vehicle, and one mech with engineering expertise in each."

"Yes, sir!" Stinger squared his shoulders, looking equally determined and terrified. He went off to start reorganizing the massed ranks, chivvying mechs into smaller groups.

"Megatron—a word?" Optimus asked, holding out a hand to stop Megatron when he made to follow Stinger. He lowered his voice. "There's—something you should know. About Cloudwing."

Megatron pulled up an eyebrow ridge, visibly impatient with Optimus' hesitation.

"I may have implied he was… ours."

"Good," Megatron said. Optimus jerked in surprise. Megatron didn't even give him a moment to process before he turned back to join his mechs. 

"Wait!" Optimus said, catching him by the arm again. 

"What is it?" Megatron snapped impatiently.

"'Good'?" Optimus asked. "That's not really the reaction I expected."

"They'd have wondered about his origins anyway." Megatron nodded to Cloudwing, who was sitting in the palm of his hand, and currently busy trying to pull himself onto Megatron's shoulder. "Your story's a lot more palatable than the truth. And it gives an explanation for why we'd have started working together that'll make sense to the grunts. It's a good plan."

"All right," Optimus said faintly. He wasn't really surprised that Megatron didn't want anyone to know the truth about Cloudwing's origins, now that he thought about it. But he hadn't expected Megatron to go along with his cover story. He'd certainly not expected that he'd have to keep up this particular ruse. 

"Come on, then," Megatron said. 

The Decepticons were still watching them expectantly, at least the ones who weren't busy getting pushed around by Stinger.

"Decepticons!" Megatron roared. They snapped to attention with a clank. Optimus barely managed to conceal a startled jump when Megatron reached out to grip his hand and lifted it high. 

"I give you my consort, Optimus Prime. In my absence, you'll follow his orders as if they were mine."

A startled hiss went through the Decepticons, and then a ragged cheer: just a few voices at first, although it picked up speed, underscored by a lot of clanking as the more enthusiastic Decepticons elbowed the more reluctant ones into joining in. Still, there were more than a few mechs just standing there, glaring at him. 

Optimus stood rooted to the spot, his hand limp in Megatron's grip. His emotion management system was starting to shut down in self-defense; he had no idea how to feel about any of this.

Megatron turned to Optimus, dropping his arm; his voice was all business now. "Send me your most current maps of the city, will you? I expect mine are badly out of date."

Optimus did. "You know where to go, then?" he asked, feeling almost faint with relief. Megatron didn't answer for a long moment, his optics flickering as he processed the map Optimus had sent him. Optimus watched him tensely. Eventually Megatron looked back up, optics brightening. 

"We aren't going anywhere." He raised his voice. "Lieutenant Stinger!"

"Yes, sir!" Stinger all but teleported back down the corridor, squaring up nervously. "I haven't quite finished the assignments—"

Megatron ignored him. He transmitted the map Optimus had sent him over an open channel. He'd marked it up with a semi-circular line, centered around the entrance to the mine. 

"Take nine of your groups and have them put up a barricade along the line I've marked."

Optimus looked at the map. It wasn't a bad plan. The area Megatron had marked was big enough to give them some space outside the mine, but not too big to defend with the people they had. They'd have the sheer cliff face of Turnox mountain at their back, making sure no one could come at them from behind, but the parts of the mine that lay beneath the mountain left them with plenty of space to retreat. There was another problem, though. 

"Your barricade's gonna cut right through Vortex quarter," Optimus pointed out. 

Megatron frowned at him. "What?"

"There's a settlement there now." Optimus pointed it out on the map. "You see, those buildings right here—"

"People _live_ there? I thought those were storage sheds or something. Are they glitched? That's right on top of the old abandoned tunnels. Half of those are ready to cave in any moment, and the rest's filled with toxic waste from the refineries."

"I don't think they had much choice about where to build," Optimus said. 

Megatron's face darkened. "You're telling me that with all the free space up in the Clearwater District—no, nevermind, we don't have time to discuss this now. We can't move the perimeter. If we pull it back any further, we'll leave the old tunnel entrances exposed to the Autobots, and the last thing we need is to give them a way to sneak up on us underground. And if we make it bigger, we won't have enough mechs to defend it." 

He turned to Stinger. "Put the barricade up where I've marked it. Don't mess with anyone's quarters more than you have to, and if you do need mechs to move, tell them we'll try and make it good later, but don't let them interfere. We don't have any time to waste."

Optimus shifted unhappily, but he didn't protest again. He hated to drag the mechs of the Vortex quarter into this, as if they didn't have it hard enough as it was. But when it came down to it, he was the one who'd made the choice to bring the Decepticons here. It was too late to change that, now. 

Megatron was still talking to Stinger. "Put the engineers in charge. I don't care whether the warframes don't like it. We'll need this barricade to hold up to a serious assault. I'd recommend you hurry. I expect we have about—" He paused. "Optimus. How long _do_ we have until the Elite Guard's fully mobilized?"

"Three joors. Maybe a bit less," Optimus said. 

"You heard him. If we don't have a working barricade by then, you'll be back in your cells before sunset tonight, cursing Optimus to the pit for inspiring this little rebellion. Scramble."

"Yes, sir! Um, sir. There's a bit of a problem? We don't have enough engineers?" Stinger said hesitantly. "Only three, really." 

Megatron's mouth curled sardonically. "That sounds like your first problem to solve, then. What are you going to do about it, Lieutenant Stinger?"

Stinger shot Optimus a panicked look. Optimus tried to look encouraging. Stinger shuffled his feet. "Some of the construction mechs have practical experience. We could—"

"Yes. Carry on," Megatron interrupted. 

Stinger paused, unsure. 

"Go on, go! Or do I need to micro-manage this entire process?"

"No, sir!" Stinger snapped out, and scrambled off with a hasty salute. 

Optimus sighed. "You could've gone a bit easier on him, you know. He's never done this before."

"Then he'll need to learn quickly, or we're all going to die," Megatron said drily. "There's not one mech with real command experience in that entire lot. Boxcar's probably the only one who's held a command position at all, and she used to be subcommander of a sanitation unit. Speaking of—" He raised his voice again. "Boxcar!"

She came clomping up to them immediately. "Yes, my lord."

"Who's the fastest flier we got? Someone you'd trust with an important mission."

"Um. That'd be Lightspeed, my Lord." Boxcar hesitated, big piledriver hands twisting anxiously. 

"Well? What is it? If you doubt whether he's trustworthy—"

Another moment of hesitation. Then Boxcar said, "No, my lord," shoulders straightening out as she obviously came to a decision. 

"Then bring him."

"Yes, my lord."

Boxcar came back with one of the Seekers from the prison's display block. The Seeker's glossy, unblemished plating stuck out even more in the grime of the mine, among the other Decepticons with their dents and their rust streaks. 

A small group of mechs followed them, all of them with eye-catchingly bright frames of their own and an obvious lack of dents between them. They stopped further down the tunnel in an anxious huddle, optics riveted to Megatron. One of them, his frame a perfect match for Lightspeed's except for the color of his wings, took a step forwards and was held back by two of the others. Optimus expected Megatron to say something about it—all these mechs had orders, and they weren't to stand around the tunnel and gawk—but Megatron ignored the entire byplay after a quick look in their direction. 

It was obvious enough why they were nervous, of course. All of them had been singled out for better treatment by the Autobot guards. Whatever Megatron did to Lightspeed, he might do to them next. Optimus was pretty sure they'd paid a heavy price for extra fuel and better cells, and most of them might not even have had a choice about it, but he didn't know whether Megatron would care; and from their nervous looks, they didn't either. 

"Lightspeed, my lord," Boxcar said, presenting the Seeker by her side. He gave her a terrified glance before he stepped up, visibly bracing himself to meet the glow of Megatron's optics.

Another Decepticon, a large, heavily dented warframe, was coming up on Boxcar's heels, muttering in a perfectly audible undertone. "…know what they've _done_ to get out of prison all polished up and well-fueled—"

"Silence, Charger," Megatron said. His tone was mild enough, but it still shut the Con up instantly. 

Megatron frowned at Lightspeed. The Seeker hunched his shoulders and folded his wings tightly against his back, as if trying to hide the lurid shine of their plating. 

"I remember you," Megatron said abruptly. 

Lightspeed uncurled slightly from his hunched position. "I won the Corrigan race twice when I was still in the Academy?" he offered hesitantly. 

Megatron snorted. "I'm afraid I didn't have much time to follow Academy sports. No. You were captured during the Iacon Access mission. You knew of our plans for the raid on the military archives. You didn't reveal anything under interrogation."

"Oh! It's good of you to remember me, my Lord," Lightspeed said, but if anything, he looked more ashamed now. He twitched, wings hugged to his frame, and blurted, "They were gonna put me in a tiny cell, underground, no window at all. I _couldn't_ —"

"Yes, I'm aware of that particular quirk of Seeker processing," Megatron said drily. "So did you give up any secrets this time around?"

"No!" Lightspeed's wings flared, defiant.

Megatron shrugged, pauldrons settling with a noisy clank. "Then whatever you traded for your window was yours to barter with. That's no business of mine. Or anyone else's, for that matter," he added more sharply, casting a look at Charger that drove him a full step back. 

He reached for Cloudwing, who was still perched on his shoulder, and lifted him down. Lightspeed's eyes went wide when Megatron held out the sparkling for him to take. "My heir. If anything happens to him, I'll rip your fuel pump from your living frame and let you watch it sputter out. Understood?"

"Yes, my Lord." Lightspeed's face was shining with awe as he reverently cradled Cloudwing to his chest. Cloudwing immediately started tapping his claws against the glass of his cockpit, chirping with delight at the hollow ring it made. Optimus winced. 

"Pick whatever location within the perimeter offers the safest options for retreat. I'm transmitting you a list of safe houses around Kaon. If things go wrong I want you to get him out of here as quickly as you can. Keep your helm down. Trust that we'll do whatever we can to recover you. Don't take any risks. His safety's paramount."

"Yes, my Lord." Lightspeed had straightened his shoulders, his wings a high, proud arch behind his back. 

Boxcar was grinning. Charger looked disgusted. Further down the tunnel, the little huddle of Seekers and racers had straightened out, too; a few of them were smiling shakily. 

"Lightspeed," Megatron said, stopping him before he could turn away. His voice was low now, for Lightspeed's audials alone, and almost gentle. "Any injuries that need attention?" 

Lightspeed's vocoder clicked, his arms cupped protectively around the sparkling. "Nothing that'll stop me flying, my Lord."

"Get yourself seen to once things have settled down. There's no shame in wounds inflicted by the enemy. No matter what they are." Megatron nodded towards the small group of mechs further down the corridor. "Tell them, too."

"Yes, my lord." Lightspeed gave a deep bow, hands still cupped around Cloudwing, who squealed happily at the sudden dip. When he straightened again, Megatron reached out and touched Cloudwing's face very gently with a single finger, and then abruptly turned around. 

"Optimus! With me," he barked, his steps already clanking away down the tunnel.

Optimus watched the grim set of Megatron's face from the corner of his optics. 

"Whatever you're about to say, how about you just keep it muted?" Megatron snapped. 

Optimus raised his hands in surrender. "Not saying anything," he said, and then the words burst out all by themselves: "That was kind of you." 

He knew Megatron wouldn't like him pointing that out. But he'd never seen Megatron be kind to his troops before. He wondered if it was another change wrought by the Decepticons' defeat and the time Megatron had spent alone in the mine. Then again, most of his experiences with Megatron as a commander had come from the other side of a battlefield. 

Megatron made an annoyed growling sound. "You and your Autobot obsession with kindness. As if a bunch of grown warriors need coddling. It's not their tender _feelings_ I was worried about. I've seen what happens when those sort of injuries get neglected out of misplaced shame. I won't have it in my army."

"And yet, it was a kind thing to do," Optimus said, ignoring Megatron's exasperated snarl. 

It wasn't the only kindness he'd seen today, among the Decepticons. He thought of the efficient way they'd transported their wounded, the way everyone with a transport alt had taken on mechs who couldn't drive themselves without even having to discuss it. Like Megatron's words to Lightspeed, it had been a practical, unsentimental sort of kindness, but that made it no less real. 

Just as the guards' cruelty towards their prisoners was no less real where it had been thoughtless or ignorant instead of deliberate.

"I didn't realize. About Seekers," Optimus said. When Megatron turned to him with a raised brow ridge, waiting for him to explain what he was talking about, he added, "I didn't know how hard it was on them to be underground. I mean, we knew they didn't like windowless cells, but who does? I didn't realize…."

"Oh, yes. It's some sort of glitch in their processor. They have a word for it, _sky call_ or _sky hunger_ or something. I'm told it sounds very poetic in Vosian. They can hold out for a while in a cell with a window. Otherwise… they'll do most anything to get out." Megatron shrugged. "Huge liability. I was pretty impressed with Lightspeed for holding out as long as he did back in Iacon, actually. He was in a bad way when we got him out. Mostly they go catatonic after a vorn or so."

Optimus shuddered. Mostly the Seekers they'd managed to take prisoner had gotten traded back very quickly. The Cons were always eager to get them back, and very willing to make concessions. Because they were valuable warriors, he'd always thought. The Autobots had always been happy enough to trade them, too, even knowing they'd go right back into the field.

Seekers made for rotten prisoners, always pacing and yelling and fighting tooth and nail to get free, getting themselves injured in hopeless escape attempts. They did mostly settle down after a few weeks or so, going quiet and resigned; hunger-striking, sometimes, although Optimus wondered, now, whether it had really been anything as deliberate as a strike. _Catatonia_? Had he ever had a Seeker captive for a full vorn? 

Why couldn't he seem to remember? Why hadn't he thought to _check_?

Megatron hadn't slowed down for Optimus's sudden preoccupation. Optimus had to hurry to catch up. "Why didn't you keep Cloudwing with you?" he asked. "I'd think he'd be safest down here right now."

Megatron snorted. "I'm about to set off some fireworks. Might be a lot less safe round here in a breem."

He'd led them into a deeper, narrower tunnel. Optimus had to drop back to walk behind him, his helm and shoulders almost scraping the walls. Megatron had to hunch down to keep from banging his helm against the top of the tunnel. Optimus could tell Megatron was running some sort of scan; occasionally, the prickle of a high-powered sonar would ping off his plating. Megatron didn't seem happy with whatever his sensors were telling him. Eventually he gave a grunt of frustration, stopped in the middle of the tunnel, and—took off his helmet. 

Optimus froze, startled. He'd never realized the helmet came off. Megatron was unfurling a crest of sensory panels, standing out like a crown around his helm. Optimus felt the sonar ping again. The panels twitched and rotated slightly. Megatron made a satisfied noise. 

He started walking again, only to make an impatient sound when he found Optimus lagging behind. 

"What is it now?"

"I didn't realize—you've never used those around me before," Optimus said, trying not to stare. 

Megatron grunted. "Not much point above the surface. They're specialized. I used to be a deep miner, Prime. You know that."

Megatron tapped the walls at regular intervals, helm tilting to listen to the echo, his sensor panels scanning back and forth. Finally he paused. "Here. Step back a bit."

He folded his crest flat to his helm again, put his helmet back on, and then transformed his whole left arm into a drill, which Optimus had also never seen him do before and had had no idea he was capable of. He was so busy being fascinated that he didn't step back in time and promptly got a cloud of dust in his intakes when Megatron started ripping into the wall. He staggered back a step, vents slamming shut belatedly. Megatron smirked. 

Megatron drilled into the wall with remarkable speed. Half a joor later, he was already so deep inside the narrow tunnel he'd made, Optimus couldn't even see him in the gloom. When the whine of the drill finally stopped, Megatron came squirming backwards out of the hole in the wall; it was too narrow for him to even turn around. 

"All right. Come on." 

Megatron led him back to his cell and ripped up his entire solid recharge block from where it was bolted to the ground, revealing a large hollow filled with energon crystals. They had the unmistakable bright purple glow of unprocessed tris-proton energon. After a long moment Optimus realized his mouth was hanging open and snapped it shut. 

"The warden was very sure you wouldn't have had any opportunity to create a stockpile."

Megatron only snorted. He was piling crystals into his arms, handling them very carefully. Once he had a full armload, he turned and held it out for Optimus to take, helping him balance the stack against his chestplates. "Carry this carefully. If you drop them, there won't be enough pieces left of you to regret it." 

Optimus very carefully rearranged the precarious stack in his arms until he was sure he had a good grip, while Megatron loaded himself down as well. It took them three trips to carry all the crystals to the tunnel he'd created. 

"Why aren't we using a cart?" Optimus asked, on the third trip. His joints were stiffening from holding his hazardous load so carefully.

"Ground's too uneven down here. Not really safe to bump a loaded cart that much."

"The crystals are that precarious?" 

Megatron snorted. "You used to be an archivist, Prime. I know you've had a formal education. Did you just go into recharge in your science classes?"

Optimus didn't respond, his faceplates heating. He had, if he was honest with himself, not paid as much attention as he should've to that part of his education. It hadn't seemed important at the time. He'd known he was going to be an archivist all his life. What did he need to know about mining, or chemistry, or the making of explosives? 

He'd regretted it many times during the war, when he found himself desperately trying to follow something his engineers were trying to explain to him. 

Megatron spread the crystals out among a series of holes he'd created at carefully spaced intervals in his new tunnel. Optimus didn't bother asking questions. Megatron didn't look like he was in any mood to explain. He spent several kliks fiddling with something Optimus couldn't see, half his upper body still in the tunnel he'd drilled. Whatever he was doing made him grunt in discomfort several times. Eventually he emerged, an open panel in his side trailing several wires, and Optimus realized in belated horror that he'd removed a piece of his own internals—a signal receiver, from the looks of it. 

"We'll need a remote trigger," Megatron said, catching his horrified look. "All right. Stand back. Oh, for pit's sake. Stand back _farther than that."_ He pushed Optimus halfway down the tunnel they'd come from before he was satisfied, which gave Optimus plenty of time to start getting nervous about whatever Megatron was planning to do. 

"Are you sure this is safe? Are we far enough away?" Optimus asked. 

Megatron shrugged. "If there's no energon deposits in that wall my sensors have missed, and if I've done the calculations correctly. If I haven't, it doesn't really matter where we stand. This whole mine's not very well-constructed, there were cave-ins all the time. If I destabilize the sediment layer—" he shrugged again. 

_Great_. 

"How likely—?" Optimus started. 

Megatron didn't give him the chance to finish the question. Optimus felt the flare of an infrared signal. There was a flash of violet light bright enough that his optics shuttered in self-defense, followed by an equally noisy boom. The walls shook. A shower of debris rained down on his armor.

He cautiously unshuttered his optics and saw, through a slowly settling cloud of dust, that where Megatron's narrow tunnel had been there was now a ragged passage thirty steps long and wide enough for two mechs to walk side by side. On the far side of it was another tunnel, one that didn't look like part of the mine. It had smooth walls and a duracrete floor. As Optimus watched, emergency lights came on with a sullen purple glow all along its length, illuminating where the Decepticon symbol had been painted on the walls in crude strokes. 

"We were less than a day away from tunneling into the mine when we found out they'd rigged the whole place to blow if it was breached. So we had to abandon that plan," Megatron said. He'd transformed his feet to a new, wider configuration and was crunching his way across the rubble-strewn ground without difficulty, stone crumbling under his treads. Optimus gingerly picked his way through the debris to follow him. His own feet weren't really made for this kind of terrain. He stumbled once, the sharp-edged rocks rolling away underneath him. Megatron caught him by the arm, steadying him until they reached the smoother ground of the Decepticon tunnel. Optimus braced himself for a mocking comment, but Megatron didn't say anything. 

Megatron seemed to know exactly where he was going, leading them along without hesitation. Optimus caught glimpses of a vast labyrinth of tunnels, half a dozen intersections branching off in every direction. 

"So this is where you were hiding?" 

They'd known the Decepticons had a hidden HQ somewhere in Kaon, and they'd suspected it was underground, but they'd never managed to find it. Kaon had been conquered and then abandoned very early in the war, before the fighting had gotten as destructive. Ironically, that had left Kaon, the first Decepticon stronghold, the least damaged of the remaining cities beside Iacon. It had made Kaon the obvious place to start rebuilding after their victory, when they'd needed to find somewhere for people to live as quickly as possible. Iacon had been choked to the rafters with refugees.

A lot of Autobots had argued against coming here, but in the end they'd not been able to justify returning to Nexus or Polyhex, both of which had been bombed into radioactive rubble, when Kaon was right there with all its infrastructure largely intact. 

Including, apparently, a largely intact network of Decepticon tunnels. 

"The tris-proton deposits interfere with most conventional sensors. And we'd spent a lot of time digging tunnels anyway, before we found out we wouldn't be able to take over the mine. It seemed as good a place to hide as any," Megatron said. 

"For a while we considered blowing up the mine ourselves, to make sure the Autobots couldn't use it. As it turned out, there was no need." His mouth twisted sardonically. "Shockingly, no one who'd ever actually worked a tris-proton mine had much sympathy for the Autobot cause, and mining tris-proton energon's not a skill you can pick up on the fly. After the last of their miners managed to escape to us they tried to shove some untrained workers down there, which worked out about as well as you'd expect. Took a few explosions before they finally realized they'd have to give up on the mine."

Optimus looked down, unsettled. He vaguely remembered this: someone had told him they'd had to stop operating the tris-proton mine for lack of workers, early in the war. He hadn't spent a lot of processing power on it at the time. It'd been just another set-back in a long list of failures. He hadn't known what it meant. He certainly hadn't realized that someone on his side had forced untrained workers to come down here, to die working in the dark, without the experience to keep themselves safe. He hadn't asked; it hadn't ever occurred to him to wonder what it took to operate a mine like this.

He should've asked. 

"Come," Megatron said, a big hand on Optimus's shoulder pushing him through the doorway to a large room. Darkened comm-consoles lined the walls. There was a huge desk with several maps on it, a few chairs scattered around, a rickety berth pushed into one corner. This must've been the command center once, Optimus realized.

"What happens now?" Optimus asked. 

He was starting to feel that dizzying sensation of piloting his own frame from a distance again. He didn't have a plan for any of this. In less than three joors the Elite Guard was going to smash down on the mine. They wouldn't hesitate to kill, Optimus knew. It would leave the Decepticons with very few options: fight back, die, or surrender and let themselves be taken back to the horror of their prison. 

He couldn't have left them there. He couldn't have stood by and watched Stinger be tortured. But he didn't know what to do now. He couldn't lead the Decepticons against his own people. He couldn't let Megatron start killing Autobots again. 

He didn't know if he could stop Megatron if he tried. 

Optimus wiped a trickle of coolant from one of his vents. Why was it so warm down here?

"First of all, we get everyone armed," Megatron said. "The good thing is, we left this place in a hurry, and we thought we'd be back a lot more quickly. And I've always liked to stockpile."

Optimus felt the static rush of a heavily encrypted comm signal. The wall at the back of the room cracked open, a hidden door swinging aside to reveal an armory. Racks upon racks of weaponry lined the wall. Blasters, projectile guns, explosives, all sorts of spare parts for onboard weaponry. And in the middle of it all, taking up a whole rack by itself, a fusion cannon much like the one Megatron had carried throughout the war. 

Optimus set one hand against the wall as his gyros recalibrated. For a moment, the room swooped sickeningly around him. The oppressive heat of the tunnels didn't help. 

"Megatron. I can't stand by while you restart the war."

Megatron turned to look at him. Optimus spun up his fans, vents wide open as he tried to dump some of the heat. He felt like he was suffocating. Megatron was frowning. Optimus's hands clenched. Everything hinged on what Megatron said next. Right now, Megatron was still unarmed, and weakened from orns on short rations, from the sparkling he'd been forced to carry with none of the support a carrier ought to have. 

If it came to a fight right now, Optimus could probably win. He'd have to kill Megatron, if he did. Megatron wouldn't surrender gracefully. He wouldn't let himself be taken hostage against his Decepticons. 

Either way, Optimus probably wouldn't get out of the mine alive. He might be able to take Megatron in one-to-one combat in his current state, but he couldn't fight his way through the whole Decepticon army on his on. And he likely couldn't get out of the mine undetected, not when plenty of Decepticons had sensors optimized for the work down here while his own navigation software struggled to map the maze of underground tunnels, and his own sensors were all but blind from interference between all the mineral deposits. 

If he killed Megatron, he'd leave the Decepticons leaderless, and then he'd die for it. There'd be no one left to interfere when the Elite Guard came. They probably wouldn't even bother trying to recapture the Decepticons. They'd slaughter everyone in the mine. Maybe Lightspeed would get away with Cloudwing; maybe the two of them would die with all the others. 

Optimus couldn't let that happen. But he couldn't stand here and watch as Megatron threw them into another brutal war, either. 

Optimus's fans were screaming. He pressed one hand against the hot ache behind his windshield. It felt like his spark was glowing red-hot inside his chest. Was this what a generator meltdown felt like? 

"Optimus. Shut down your fans," Megatron said. 

Optimus waved that away, irritably. It wasn't polite to run your fans full-blast like this in public, no. What did that matter right now? He was overheating; it was the stress. "What are you going to do?" he asked. His voice crackled with static. 

"I'll defend my people. You need to calm down. I'm serious. Shut down your fans," Megatron said. Why was he going on about that? 

"That's hardly—the most important—" Optimus kept having to reboot his glitching vocoder. He leaned more heavily into the hand he'd braced against the wall. There was something wrong with his optical feed. Jagged lines flickered across his vision. "I won't stop you defending yourself, but you can't—"

"I have no interest in restarting the war," Megatron said. "We lost when we had better preparation, better equipment, and a lot more mechs than I've got now. I don't want to see another slaughter. I'll do what I have to do to keep my people safe, but I won't attack without provocation. Does that satisfy you? Now will you calm down?"

It wasn't much. _I'll do what I have to do_. Optimus had already seen how far Megatron was willing to stretch those words. There'd been plenty of atrocities Megatron had been able to justify to himself because he'd decided it was what needed to be done. But it was still more of a concession than he'd ever gotten out of Megatron before. 

"Thank you," he said, or tried to. The words were almost entirely static. The hot ache in his chest was only growing. 

"Oh for pit's sake," Megatron snapped. He took a quick step forward and grabbed Optimus by the arm. Optimus startled, much too late to do any good. Megatron already had him. He dragged Optimus towards the rickety cot in the corner, sat down on it hard enough to make it creak alarmingly, and yanked Optimus down on top of him, shoving until Optimus sat in the vee of Megatron's legs, his back pressed to Megatron's chest plates. 

"Calm down," Megatron snapped. "You're not overheating. Look at your temperature readouts."

There was the sound of a transformation behind him. He felt Megatron move a few layers of chest armor aside: not enough to expose his spark, but enough that Optimus could feel the heat of his reactor blasting against his back. Optimus flinched away from him on instinct—what did Megatron think he was doing, Optimus was _already_ overheating—until he registered how strangely pleasant the warmth felt. 

Megatron wrapped his arms around him, hauling him back against his chest. "Check your pit-damned readouts!" he snarled. 

Optimus checked. It took him a moment to even find the right sub-menu, when usually autonomic readouts came up easily and instinctively; his entire HUD seemed to be lagging. 

"Oh," he said. 

"Yes," Megatron said. "Now shut down your fans."

Megatron was right; he wasn't overheating. His fans were still blasting, seemingly of their own accord. As he watched, his temperature gauge ticked down another degree. He was already far below optimal operating temperature. The ache in his chest resolved with sudden clarity into the feeling of his engine struggling to operate, with his fans drawing away far more heat than was being produced. 

Optimus struggled to find the command; it wouldn't execute correctly. His HUD was still glitching, and his fans didn't seem to want to slow. "I can't—"

Megatron groaned. "I ought to leave you here. You're not a newspark, Optimus. We don't have time for this nonsense," he muttered, but his arms wrapped more securely around Optimus, holding him against the thrumming warmth of his chest plates. "Calm down. It'll be all right."

Every time Optimus managed to get his fans to slow down a little, they almost immediately ratcheted back up. The bearings were starting to ache. "I can't—" he gasped.

"Let me plug in," Megatron said. 

Optimus jerked against him, helm shaking in startled denial. How could Megatron even— _now_ —to think of interfacing, like this—

Megatron was still holding him immobile against his chest, one powerful arm across his chassis. Optimus's engine whined in distress as he tried to pull free.

_"Optimus!"_

The snap of Megatron's voice cut through some of the confused panic. "Your medical port," Megatron said. Optimus finally became aware of where Megatron's other hand was, as he rapped sharply on the cover to the port on his wrist. "Open up."

Medical port. Not interfacing. A medical connection—which hadn't occurred to him as an option, because Megatron shouldn't even have the hardware to plug into his medical port. "Yeah—yes—okay," Optimus said, looking down at the port, which didn't open. 

Megatron groaned, exasperated. He threaded a claw into the seam and pried the cover up. 

"Ow!" Optimus said automatically, knowing it had to have hurt, although all that was really coming through from his sensor net was a disorienting rush of static.

Megatron popped a panel, drew out what was, in fact, a medic's cord, and plugged in. It felt strange to exchange access authorization with someone who didn't have a medic's override codes, but Megatron was crisp and professional about it, pushing into his systems with every appearance of someone who knew exactly what he was looking for. He wasn't particularly gentle, but he wasn't rough about it, either. After a moment Optimus found he could relax into the sensation. The brisk confidence, the hint of exasperation, weren't entirely unfamiliar. It was almost like letting Ratchet fix him up after he'd gotten himself into a scrape. 

He couldn't really follow what Megatron was doing, although he could feel him poking around somewhere in the thermal regulation settings. His straining fans finally started powering down.

Optimus let his helm sink back against Megatron's shoulder, exhausted. It felt like his entire body was made of lead. "I'm sorry," he managed. "I'm all right now. We need to get back to work—"

Megatron's arms tightened around him again, stopping Optimus's attempt to get up before he'd managed to do more than lift his heavy helm.

"Just rest for a moment. Let your system settle. It won't help anyone if you collapse on the floor and smash up your processor."

"I'm sorry," Optimus repeated. He let himself sink a bit more heavily against Megatron's warm frame. Now that he'd stopped glitching, he was uncomfortably aware of the fact that he was chilled through to the struts. "What _was_ that?" 

It was clear Megatron had dealt with this before. He'd realized what was going on long before Optimus had, and he'd known exactly what to do. 

Megatron shrugged. "Some sort of processing fault. Usually you see it in newsparks who've been in combat for the first time, or young mechs who've had a bad shock. Something about the neural disruption throws the thermoregulation protocols for a loop. Heat helps. Goes away by itself if you wait it out, mostly. I've only seen someone die from it once."

_Die?_

It had made Optimus _feel_ like he was dying, but he was startled to realize he might've been in actual danger. "You can't die from running your fans too hard, that's just a horror story. There's no way to cool your reactor down so much it'll stall out with just your own ventilation system."

"Of course not," Megatron said. "That was back in the mines. His name was Shatterplot. His conjunx had died in a tunnel collapse. He got so upset, nothing we tried worked to calm him down. He ran his fans till most of them broke down. He was cheaply made, no alternate cooling system to fall back on. We had some replacement parts, but not near enough to fix that level of damage, and the overseers wouldn't get a medic down to fix a Disposable. It took him two weeks to die of overheating."

"I'm sorry," Optimus said quietly. He knew it'd been bad in the mines. It wasn't like Megatron hadn't talked about it before. But still. Such a slow horrible death, for something as easily fixed as a broken ventilation system. 

Megatron nudged him harshly. "Don't get upset again, we don't have time for another episode. I shouldn't have told you that story. It was a long time ago."

"You couldn't… do for him what you just did for me?" 

Megatron was still plugged into his system, although he'd narrowed the connection to the thinnest of strands, no more than he needed to keep monitoring the temperature control system. 

"No. I wasn't forged with a medical plug, you realize. I didn't get this until long after I left the mine," Megatron said. 

It _was_ obvious that the plug wasn't originally part of Megatron's frame now that he looked at it. The cord was garishly striped in yellow and green tones that clashed wildly with Megatron's own color scheme. It was starting to fray where it had been spliced messily into one of Megatron's own input cables. Towards the base, the cord's color washed out to a sickly gray. It was the sort of thing you saw when a mech's nanites were trying to reject a badly integrated graft. 

"Isn't that painful?"

Megatron grunted dismissively. "We didn't have a medic for a long time. We adapted."

Megatron unplugged from Optimus's medical port, tapped the cover closed, and started spooling his cable back up—manually, Optimus noted. So it wasn't even integrated well enough to be properly retractable. 

"I downloaded the relevant parts of a repair manual we seized from the university of Iacon," Megatron said, sealing the whole messy spool of damaged cable back into its hatch on his side. He snorted. "I clearly remember deciding not to integrate the section on carrier and sparkling care. Or the section on faulty neural processing. Didn't seem likely to be relevant, at the time."

He gave Optimus a firm push between the shoulder blades, bending him forward enough that he had space to slide his chest armor back into place. Optimus had to muffle a groan of protest as he was cut off from the soothing warmth of Megatron's reactor. But the temperature gauge in his HUD held steady now: a little lower than he'd have liked, but nothing to get concerned about. 

"There. See if you can stand," Megatron said, lifting him to his feet with the same casual lack of effort as a construction mech handling a sack of cement. Optimus wobbled before he caught himself, ignoring the ridiculous urge to collapse back against Megatron's solid warmth. 

"All right now?" Megatron asked. 

"Yes. I apologize." His face plates heated, thinking of the picture he must've made, huddling against Megatron like a scared sparkling. He rebooted his vocoder, trying to clear the stubborn crackle that still came through with every word. "What happens now?"

"Well, first of all I'd like to get that fusion cannon reconnected. Will you help me?" Megatron asked. 

Optimus flinched. This was it. Point of no return. 

But then, he'd already made his decision. 

The last time he'd thrown his lot in with Megatron, it'd ended badly. There wasn't any guarantee it'd go any better this time. But sometimes the only way forward was a leap of faith. 

"Yes," Optimus said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hopefully, future updates will be a bit quicker. Happy Easter/happy Passover to those who celebrate! If you want to make me very happy for the holidays and if there was a line, paragraph or scene you particularly liked, I'd love to know what it was! <3


	3. Disposable

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is going to be a short one, because the chapter after this needs some heavy editing and might take a while. Happy Workers' Day!

The cannon was an older model. Optimus faintly remembered Megatron wielding it very early in the war. He held it in his arms, feeling the weight of it. It was a terrible weapon, and he'd had plenty of experience being on the other side of it. 

The Autobots had abandoned research into fusion cannon technology relatively early. There just weren't that many applications for it. Even among warframes, very few mechs could generate the power output needed to fire one, they took a long time to recharge, and the blasts themselves were complete overkill—unless you _wanted_ to kill a whole bunch of mechs at once at very close range. You needed to be willing to put yourself in the thick of a crowded battlefield to use it effectively, and you had to be able to hold your opponents off while it recharged. 

_Optimus_ could've used it, but just the thought made him shudder. He'd seen the damage it caused. He'd seen how terrifyingly effective Megatron was with it. 

And now Optimus was about to hand that horrible weapon back to him.

Megatron held out his arm, and Optimus made a startled sound of dismay as he got a close look at the connectors for the first time. Megatron's captors had removed his cannon without giving him anything to cover the bared couplings. They'd left a bunch of direct neural hook-ups bared to the dank air of the mine. The receptors had oxidized. 

"That's going to need a medic," he said, trying not to flinch away from the gory sight of corrosion on _unprotected neural circuitry_. 

"Nonsense. Just get the rust off. There'll be a brush in that desk somewhere."

Optimus winced, but Megatron was still holding out his arm, implacable, so Optimus went and dug through various drawers until he found a wire brush. 

Megatron didn't make a single sound through the no-doubt agonizing process of having his _bare neural contact points_ scrubbed. Optimus gritted his teeth and tried to get through it as fast as he possibly could. Megatron sat unmoving, stoic, staring straight ahead. His free hand gripped the berth. The metal groaned as it slowly bent under his fingers.

"Wait," Megatron suddenly said, his voice a harsh scrape. He abruptly yanked his arm from Optimus's grip and cradled it against his chest, his entire body curling around it. His fans were going hard and he was losing his iron control over his expression, teeth bared in a grimace.

"I'm sorry," Optimus said. He tentatively reached for Megatron's shoulder. "We might need to get a medic to do this after all—"

"And where do you expect we'll get a medic? Just finish it _quickly_ ," Megatron snapped, holding his arm back out. He was trembling very faintly. Optimus steeled himself and scrubbed the brush over the contact points again, wire bristles scraping over the bare etched metal. At least the rust was coming off quickly; the corrosion hadn't progressed too far. 

"That should do it," he said finally, after another agonizingly long breem. Megatron sagged in on himself, cradling his arm. 

"Here," Optimus said, holding out the cannon. Megatron let him click it into place. The tight lines of his face eased as the connections formed, calibration routines smoothing away the pain of exposed circuitry. 

Megatron flexed his arm a couple times, the cannon shifting smoothly along with his micro-transformations. Then he started charging it, a low threatening hum that instantly brought every single combat routine Optimus had screaming to life. 

"Um," Optimus said, sheepishly retracting the blaster that had popped out of his arm. 

Megatron smirked at him. "I'm testing, Optimus. Relax."

"Oh, and you'd be completely unaffected if _I_ suddenly charged my weapons around you?" Optimus grumbled. 

Megatron only laughed. The cannon reached a hundred percent, the rings along its side glowing brightly with power. Optimus watched him uneasily. He'd always worked very hard to make sure Megatron wouldn't have time to fully charge between blasts in combat. He knew how devastating the fusion cannon was at full power. If Megatron set it off down here, he was going to bring the tunnel down on their heads. 

"What are you—?" he started, and broke off in dismay. 

Megatron was _absorbing_ the charge, drawing it back in through what must be still-tender connectors. He was going to overload the wiring in his arm. There was no way that didn't hurt. But Megatron's face showed no sign of pain. What a stoic old pile of bolts he was, Optimus thought, exasperated. Why did he always have to do everything the hard way?

Megatron sighed in satisfaction as the cannon powered down. 

"What are we going to do now?" Optimus asked. 

Megatron shrugged. "Don't know about you. Me, I'm going to go up and see whether that bunch of miscalibrated excavators has managed to put up anything like a credible barricade." He grunted, sounding annoyed. "You had one shot at the 'Trust me, I'm your Prime,' gambit. You couldn't have blown it on getting my command staff out instead?"

"It's not like I planned any of this," Optimus said. 

"Yes, thank you, that's perfectly obvious."

"I couldn't leave them there."

Megatron sighed. "And I'm sure they'll be very grateful for your scruples when the Elite Guard gets here and they all get recaptured and disciplined for this little stunt."

He didn't bother waiting for a reply as he swept out the door. 

Optimus sat down heavily on the berth. Megatron was right, of course. When he'd freed the Decepticons, he'd accepted responsibility for them. If they were captured, their punishment would be on his shoulders. He shuttered his optics, leaned his helm against the cold steel wall, and forcibly shut down his fans, which were already trying to speed back up. 

He activated his comm link, reaching for a familiar frequency. There were several dozen missed calls piled up in his comm suite, he realized belatedly. 

"What in the actual pit do you think you're doing, Optimus?" Ratchet yelled down the line, as soon as he accepted the call. 

Optimus smiled. It was good to hear that familiar irascible voice. "Ratchet. I'm going to need you to hear me out."

* * *

He caught up with Megatron near the entrance of the mine. Megatron was standing with Stinger and a few other Decepticons, all of them bent over a strategic map. 

"Megatron. A word," Optimus said. 

"Carry on," Megatron told his mechs and followed him a little further down the tunnel. He didn't even hesitate. Optimus had asked for his attention, and gotten it immediately. It was a strange feeling after all the time he'd spent bashing his helm against the Council's disinterest lately.

"Ratchet will be joining us," Optimus said. 

"Really? I wouldn't have thought he'd be too happy with your decisions today," Megatron said. 

Optimus sighed. "Oh, he had all sorts of things to say about it." At great length. And great volume. He'd had to turn down the sound on the call. Twice. 

"I'll let the guards know to expect him."

Optimus had that momentary feeling of dislocation again, expecting resistance and finding none. He couldn't quite help prodding at it. "You're not worried he's going to spy on you?"

"Old Ratchet the Hatchet, violate his patients' confidentiality? Please. He had a reputation among Decepticons as well, you know. Tell him he's very welcome. There's not a single mech here who couldn't do with a tune-up."

"There's something else," Optimus said, bracing himself. 

Megatron gave him a scowl. "I'm not going to like this, am I?"

"I want to release the footage I recorded of the conditions in Kaliax prison."

"No," Megatron said immediately, in a tone of finality, and turned away. And there it was, the resistance he'd been waiting for. 

Optimus grabbed him by the arm. His processor ached, a stinging throb like the whine of a medic's drill going through cranial plating. He was so pit-damned tired of mechs refusing to even give him the chance to make his arguments. 

"People need to know the truth. If we can convince the mechs of Kaon—"

"Yes, I can tell where you're going with this. The answer's still no," Megatron said impatiently. "The last thing we need right now is for everyone to see the Decepticons weakened. We're not handing out detailed holographic evidence of exactly how fighting fit our forces _aren't_ right now."

He tried to turn away again, like this discussion was over just because he'd decided it was. Optimus ground his teeth. Pit-spawned irritating high-handed son of a glitch. "I don't need your permission to release footage from my personal drives, Megatron, so you're going to hear me out or so help me Primus—"

He regretted the words almost instantly. It wasn't a surprise when Megatron whirled around, his arm coming up, the cannon starting to emit that alarming hum again. He'd known Megatron was going to hear the words as a threat. That's why he'd said them. He'd wanted Megatron to _pay attention_ instead of dismissing him outright. But threatening him had never been the way to make Megatron listen. 

Optimus fought down his combat routines and made himself lift his hands, conciliatory. "Stop. I'm not fighting you. We're going to talk about this."

Megatron snarled at him, teeth bared, fusion cannon still humming menacingly. Optimus gave ground just a little. "I won't release the footage without your consent. If I promise you that, will you listen?" 

Megatron slowly let his arm sink down until the muzzle of his cannon pointed at the ground. He wasn't powering it down, mind. Optimus sighed. 

"Not being intimidating enough is _not_ our problem right now," he said, giving the cannon a pointed look. "Everyone's terrified of you! And that's exactly why they'll put everything they have into wiping us out before we can turn into a serious threat again. What we need is mechs sympathetic to our cause."

Megatron's mouth was already curling into that dismissive sneer again. Optimus controlled the urge to shake him until he paid attention. Why couldn't Megatron ever just _listen_ to him? He kept his voice steady with an effort. "I know you think I'm being naive. But there's still a lot of mechs out there willing to listen to the truth, if we can manage to show it to them."

He throttled down his roaring engine and made himself stand down from combat readiness. This wasn't a battle, even if Megatron always had to treat everything as if it was. Megatron's stance eased up in response. He finally powered down his cannon. 

"We used to be the side that told the truth, once." Optimus said. "You stood up in front of everyone and told them exactly how they were being deceived. You didn't let anyone stop you. No matter the cost." 

Optimus could still remember how star-struck he'd been by Megatron in the beginning. Megatron had been the most captivating public speaker he'd ever seen, utterly unflinching about the ugly truths he told. He could barely remember, now, when that had started to change. It had happened so gradually: propaganda creeping into Megatron's speeches, honesty turning into demagoguery and finally outright calls to violence. But the one thing Megatron had never done was let fear hold him back from saying what he wanted to say. 

Optimus reached out to put a hand on Megatron's arm, not letting go until Megatron finally looked at him properly: not just assessing the threat he posed, but really seeing him. 

"Let me do this, Megatron. They deserve to see the truth of what's going on. And yes, it's a risk. Maybe we _are_ going to expose a strategic weakness. But isn't that worth it, to be the side that tells the truth again?"

There was a long pause. 

"Primus damn you," Megatron snarled. 

Optimus sighed. Disappointment hit him surprisingly hard. When had he gotten his hopes up? He'd known it wasn't going to be easy to find a way to work together. And he _had_ promised Megatron not to release the footage without his consent, so now he'd have to stick to his word—

And then Megatron turned around and bellowed out, "Stinger! Find me someone who knows how to do holo editing." He added in an undertone, "I hope you're happy, Orion, because if this backfires on us it'll be on _your_ conscience."

Optimus was almost dizzy with the rush of elation. Megatron had listened to him. The feeling was heady enough that it took him long moments to even notice Megatron's slip, the old name Megatron hadn't called him since back when they'd been friends. 

Maybe it wasn't a surprise that he'd slipped up, in this moment, during this argument that was so much like the ones they'd used to have: Orion Pax's faith in his fellow Cybertronians crashing against Megatronus's cynicism. Megatron himself didn't even seem to have noticed what he'd said. But it was hard not to take it as a sign. Maybe it wasn't too late to find a way to resurrect some small shred of that old friendship. 

And if Megatron and Optimus Prime could find a way to mend their rift, wasn't there hope for Autobots and Decepticons?

"It's been more than twenty vorns, you're not even in the same frame anymore, and I can _still_ tell when you're being an optimistic idiot. You get that look on your face," Megatron said, frowning at him. "If your dream-in-the-sky idealism gets any of my people killed—"

"Uh, my lords? Should I come back later?" Stinger said. 

Optimus startled. He felt Megatron suppress a twitch beside him, so apparently he hadn't noticed Stinger coming up, either. 

"What is it?" Megatron snapped.

"You asked about holo editing, sir," Stinger prompted, wincing.

"Yes," Megatron said, giving himself a little shake. "Right. Report."

"I could ask Digger, sir?" Stinger suggested.

Megatron looked taken aback. "Are we talking about the same Digger? Excavator alt, yellow plating, uses a bolt rifle?"

"He takes loads of holos. Really funny ones," Stinger said. 

"'Funny' isn't really what's called for right now. But I suppose beggars can't be choosers. Bring him," Megatron ordered. 

Optimus could see why Megatron had been skeptical as soon as Digger rolled up. He was a big mech with a broad, affable smile and a pair of enormous hands that even in root form looked like shovels. From the shape of his cranial casing, he had nothing but the standard processor issued to cold-constructed labor mechs. A processor that definitely wasn't optimized for the kind of graphics processing work that holo-editing required. 

But that was exactly the kind of function-centric thinking Megatron had gone to war against. Optimus ought to know better, he reminded himself sternly. 

Digger listened attentively as Optimus explained what he'd had in mind, nodding along. 

"Sure. I can do something like that. I could have a first draft ready for you in a few joors, if that's all right, my lords? Won't be anything too special in that kind of time frame, though."

"I'm not expecting miracles, Digger. Although if you can edit it to make us look sympathetic without making us look completely pathetic, that _would_ be appreciated," Megatron said drily. There was a dangerous glint in his optics. 

Digger winced but nodded. "I'll do my best, my lord."

Digger and Stinger left together. 

"There. You've won. Happy now, Prime?" Megatron snapped, as soon as they were alone.

Optimus sighed. So it was 'Prime' again now. "Can we please not go down that path this time, Megatron? I'm not your enemy and I'm not trying to undermine your authority, or whatever it is you think I'm doing. I'd hope you'd know me better than that after all this time. I don't want to be in command of your army. Or any army. I want to work together." 

"We are. I've done what you wanted, even."

Optimus throttled his engine down again with an effort. "And I thank you for listening."

Megatron snorted. "There's no need to be sentimental. If this goes wrong, I _will_ hold you responsible."

"Fair enough," Optimus said. 

He looked at the bustling activity outside the entrance to the mine. "First priority's still the barricade, I assume?"

If they didn't have something that would actually hold up to the Elite Guard by the time they got here, nothing else would matter. 

"Yes," Megatron said. 

"What can I do to help?"

Megatron looked briefly startled. But then, knowing the rest of his command staff, Optimus wasn't sure "helpfulness" was a trait he was used to from his allies. 

Megatron looked him up and down. "Well, you _do_ have a convoy alt. I'm sure the teams at the barricade could use some help with the hauling."

"All right. I'll ask Stinger where he can use me, then," Optimus said, and only belatedly recognized the sardonic note that'd been in Megatron's voice when Megatron gave him another startled glance. 

Optimus sighed. "How long have you known me, Megatron? Do you really still believe I think I'm too good to help with what needs doing?"

"I suppose not," Megatron said, still looking faintly bemused. "Go on, then. I'm going to see what I can do about reactivating everyone's onboard weaponry. I hope that medic of yours gets here quickly."

* * *

Stinger looked just as startled when Optimus asked where he could use him, but all he said was "I'll take you to Grader. She's taken charge of constructing the barricade." 

He led Optimus down a side tunnel that seemed to be some sort of shortcut. Optimus really had to remember to get a map of the mine and the Decepticon tunnels at some point. Stinger was giving him little sideways glances, his tail swishing restlessly behind him. Twice he seemed to make up his mind to say something, only to swallow it down again. 

"What is it, Stinger?" Optimus asked. 

"Why _are_ you helping us, sir?" Stinger blurted. 

Optimus hesitated. The whole situation was still a tangled knot of dread inside his processor, too big to put into a single easy answer. "I couldn't simply stand there and do nothing. What they were doing to you, in Kaliax—"

The memories rose up, bringing back the vivid stench of the prison. For a moment he was standing there again, watching the guard jab his shock stick into Stinger's unprotected side. 

Stinger frowned. "I get that you felt sorry for us. They always said if you get yourself caught don't expect compassion from the Autobots, but if you can get to Optimus Prime, he might have pity on you. Um. No offense, sir. That's what they said. So I knew you don't like them mistreating prisoners, on principle. But you didn't blow up your whole life for the principle of it. We were your enemies, you don't owe us anything. Why do you _care_?"

"All sentient beings deserve to be treated with respect," Optimus said. 

"Yeah, but that's slag. Sorry. Sir," Stinger added hastily. "That's just something you'd say in a speech. It's a nice idea, but no one dies for a nice idea."

"You fought with the Decepticons. You must've thought their ideas were worth dying for, once."

"Yeah, sure, but I was just some factory drone. They had me chained to the assembly line in the Kalis factories, cutting durasteel into strips seventeen joors a day." Stinger demonstratively slashed his tail down in a cutting arc, then winced when the messy wound where the blade had been spattered a few oily gray drops onto the ground. Optimus would have to ask Megatron to take a look at him as soon as he had a moment to spare, before the nanite decay spread any further. 

"We only got a rest-day once a decacycle, and only if there wasn't a rush order on. It wasn't really enough for self-repair to keep up, so we were all breaking down all the time. And it's not like they were repairing us. I wasn't—wasn't meant to be repaired, sir. I was, you know…. built as a Disposable." Stinger's voice dropped down to a whisper on those last few words. He looked down at the floor as if trying to avoid Optimus's optics. 

Optimus felt a wave of sorrow, rising up out of a bottomless ocean of rage. They'd used Stinger as if he was nothing more than a machine, and they'd have thrown him away like a piece of trash when he reached the end of his usability. A _person_ , a living mech with a spark.

Optimus reached out to put a hand on his shoulder. "I'm sorry. I didn't realize—"

"I don't look much like a Disposable, do I, sir?" Stinger asked, sounding hopeful. "You wouldn't have guessed just to look at me?"

It felt like something was wringing his spark inside his chest. "No, Stinger. I wouldn't have been able to tell. But it doesn't change my opinion of you, now that I know."

"They ordered a whole batch of us, and they had to make us pretty big and strong, bigger than they'd normally go for Disposables, just 'cause it takes so much force to cut through durasteel. But we had to be cheap, because it didn't make sense to invest more money than it'd have cost to improve the assembly line instead."

"Oh, Stinger. I'm so sorry," Optimus said miserably. 

Stinger winced. "Not all of us was made cheaply, sir," he added quickly, defensively. "Should've seen me with my blade. That was a coronid alloy, as durable as it gets." He sighed, looking wistful. 

"The joint where it attached wasn't that stable, though. Eventually you'd get fractures there, and there wasn't any repairing that. The rest of me's just plasteel. Can't even weld that slag." Stinger snipped a claw against his plating, making a face at the dull little "thud" it made, nothing like the ring of well-forged armor. 

"Most of them—the others like me, I mean—they managed to keep working for an orn or two once the first fractures showed up, trying to hide it, you know, but eventually they couldn't keep up with the assembly line. That's when the overseers 'retired' them." Stinger's shoulders hunched.

"Out of the whole batch of us, there were seven left when Megatron burned down the factory and let us out. So, you see, I'd follow him anywhere. But that's me. If they'd let me be an _archivist_ , I sure wouldn't have signed up to get shot at instead."

"I'm sorry," Optimus repeated. His vocoder hurt. He found himself casting about for something to say. 

"You wanted to be an archivist, then?"

"Oh, no. I can't read." Stinger looked down again. "Never got the software. Seems nice, though. Megatron's written books, you know—I mean, 'course you know. Bet you've even read them. Someone read me a couple pages, once. It had this poem. _Face-down in the dirt, we still feel the galaxy above us—_ I don't really remember how the rest of it went. Like to read it again, if I could."

"That's one of my favorite poems of his," Optimus said with a smile. "But that's an easy fix, Stinger—processing textual data is one of the most basic downloads there is. I'll put it on a padd for you, you can integrate the update with your next defrag—"

"I can't update, sir," Stinger said. He was looking down again, his tail curling tightly around one leg. He blindly held out his arm, lifting up the cover where the most basic of his data ports should sit at his wrist, ready to connect to a padd or a console. Optimus flinched in horror. There was nothing but smooth featureless plasteel where a connector should've been. They'd not even left the wiring to put a port in later.

"They weren't taking any chances on updates by that point. The orn before they made us, someone from the resistance managed to put a bunch of their materials in with the updates for the workers at the Polyhex docks. Patches for the ones with personality suppression blocks, contact information for the Decepticon underground, all that. There was an uprising that killed seven guards before they managed to put it down. So they figured they'd give us the basic software, and that's that. We were made disposable anyway, what did we need bug fixes for?" 

Stinger closed the panel and put his other hand on top, as if to make extra sure the horror of his missing ports was hidden. "I get weird crashes sometimes. Not anything that'd be a problem in combat, I swear!" he added hastily. "Did it on purpose for a while, in prison, when the pain got too much. But it wasn't a good idea. Didn't want to risk the guards finding me crashed in my cell and deciding I was so messed up they could just dispose of me."

"You shouldn't have had to go through any of that," Optimus said. He ached to _do_ something, but there wasn't anything to be done. It'd been Megatron who'd freed Stinger when he'd burned down the Kalis factories. The Decepticons had killed all of the supervisors. Unarmed mechs, civilians. The Council had held it up as evidence of their senseless brutality.

Stinger shrugged. "You want to know something funny? Almost everyone in my cohort had to be disposed of because their blade broke off at the joint. I waited for it. Every single time I got off shift in the evening I checked for the first fracture to show up, to find out that it was my time to be deactivated. Every day I checked. There wasn't so much as a single hairline fracture by the time I got captured. When he sliced through the joint, the medic grumbled about how hard it was to cut."

"I'm so sorry, Stinger," Optimus said again. 

"Do you think Megatron realizes, about me being a Disposable?" Stinger asked. "Maybe I should tell him. I wasn't trying to be deceptive, it just—"

"Stinger, he wouldn't care." Optimus said. "Megatron's cold-constructed himself."

"Yeah, but he's _well-constructed._ From back when they still used to do it properly. They say his armor was made to withstand a tunnel collapse up to a hundred tons! They didn't spark _him_ with some second-rate mass-market processor."

"There's nothing wrong with your processor. You're doing just fine. You've been stepping up to do the things that needed doing from the moment we met. That's what makes a good officer, not the exact amount of RAM you're working with."

"All right," Stinger said. He ran an exhaust cycle, puffs of dust rising from several vents, and nodded to himself. "Okay. The thing that needs doing right now is the barricade, so let's get it moving."

**Author's Note:**

> This story was originally inspired by [this very cute comic](https://pollution-of-subterranean-waters.tumblr.com/post/163859702919/darklordofcutlets-taiyari-yo) about Megatron as a sparkling in the mines, and the tumblr discussion that followed it. 
> 
> Warnings: Megatron is carrying a sparkling after he was raped in prison by an Autobot guard. Several of the other Decepticons were raped as well. All of this happened before the start of the story and is only implied, none of the non-con is explicit or graphic, and there's no non-con between Megatron and Optimus, or any other Autobots we know.


End file.
